By IANS,
Raipur : Congress president Sonia Gandhi has advised party leaders in Chhattisgarh to stop bickering publicly over picking candidates for the November assembly elections, party sources said Thursday.
In the wake of a tussle among key leaders of the Chhattisgarh Congress, Gandhi has spoken to former chief minister Ajit Jogi and another senior leader, Arvind Netam, asking them to prepare “panels of ticket aspirants on a consensus basis”, the sources said.
Jogi, nine-time Congress MP Vidyacharan Shukla, Netam and party treasurer Motilal Vora are all trying to get nominations for their respective supporters.
The sources said Jogi, who is MP from the Mahasamund seat, is keen to fight the polls from his traditional Marwahi seat. His wife Renu is set to contest from Kota, the seat she won in the December 2006 by-polls.
Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Chhattisgarh is expected to go to the polls in November along with Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
In the 90-member assembly, the BJP currently has 52 seats, Congress 34 while the Nationalist Congress Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have one seat each. Two seats are vacant.