Chennithala appointed as chairman of Congress's Kerala LS election campaign committee

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala)/New Delhi [India], March 13 (ANI): AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday appointed senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala as the chairman of the Congress's Lok Sabha election campaign committee in Kerala.
In a statement, the AICC said that the Congress president has approved the proposal for the appointment of Chennithala as the chairman of the campaign committee of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee for the upcoming general elections with immediate effect.
The Congress will contest 16 seats in Kerala, while the rest of the four seats will be contested by the constituent parties, announced Kerala Congress MLA and Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan after the party's Central Election Committee meeting on Thursday.
Prominent among them are AICC General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and CWC member Shashi Tharoor. Kerala has 20 parliamentary seats.
Chennithala's appointment coincides with the Congress's decision to once again nominate Rahul Gandhi for the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat.
The Congress has fielded all the sitting MPs except T N Prathapan in Thrissur.
The constituents of the Congress-led UDF will contest the four other seats, with the Indian Union Muslim League fielding candidates in two segments and Kerala Congress (Joseph) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) each fielding one.
The party-led UDF had won 19 out of 20 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The number decreased to 18 after the Kerala Congress (M), which won the Kottayam seat, switched over to the CPI(M)-led LDF before the 2021 assembly polls.
Notably, Congress on Friday released its first list of candidates for 39 Lok Sabha constituencies.
The names have been announced for Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshwadeep, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim, Telangana and Tripura. (ANI)