india

Updated: Aug 23, 2019 02:04 IST

The Congress on Thursday formed a six-member screening committee for the Maharashtra assembly elections, with senior party leader Jyotiraditya Scindia as its chairman.

A party statement said the other members of the screening committee are All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary incharge for Maharashtra, Mallikarjun Kharge, state Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat and Congress legislature party leader K C Padavi.

Senior leaders Harish Chaudhary and Manickam Tagore are also its members.

The screening committee will finalise the candidates for the assembly polls and make its recommendations to the party’s central election committee. Maharashtra will go to the polls later this year.

After being out of government for five years, the Congress is seeking to wrest back power from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in alliance with the Shiv Sena, The saffron alliance won a comfortable majority in the last assembly election in 2014 and then secured 41 of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha in this summer’s general election. The Congress will contest the election in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The Congress-NCP alliance ruled Maharashtra for three straight terms but slumped to a defeat in 2014. Since then, a number of leaders have left the NCP and the Congress for the BJP. The Opposition parties blame the ruling party of poaching its leaders, a charge rejected by the BJP .

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)