Gandhinagar: With the polling date just a little over a month away in the state, political parties have announced their candidates for the Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat. While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has already announced the names of all 26 candidates for the Lok Sabha, the main opposition party Congress has only announced 17 candidates.

The Congress party is contesting the general election in an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Gujarat. According to the seat-sharing agreement, the Congress will be contesting on 24 Lok Sabha seats. However, the party has not yet announced candidates for 7 seats, namely Mahesana, Ahmedabad East, Surendranagar, Rajkot, Junagadh, Vadodara, and Navsari.

In two lists, the party has announced 7 and 11 candidates respectively. However, with the resignation of Rohan Gupta, the Ahmadabad East seat is again without any candidate.

With polling set to take place on May 7 in Gujarat, the reason for the delay in announcing candidates by the Congress party remains unknown.

In another development, the by-elections for 5 assembly seats in Gujarat, namely Vijapur, Porbandar, Manavadar, Khambhat, and Vaghodia, will also take place along with the Lok Sabha polls. The ruling BJP has announced the candidates for all these seats, whereas the Congress party has not made any declaration regarding the by-elections. It is also noteworthy that the party has not even announced whether it will fight the by-polls on its own or form any alliance with the Indian National Congress Alliance partner, AAP, on any of these seats. DeshGujarat