Jharkhand polls 2019: Congress names two candidates in fourth list, Gourav Vallabh to contest against CM

The Congress on Sunday released the fourth list of two candidates who will be contesting the upcoming Jharkhand assembly election.

The names of the candidates are Professor Gourav Vallabh (party's national spokesperson) from the Jamshedpur East seat and Mamata Devi from Ramgarh seat.

The following candidates have been approved for the ensuing Legislative Assembly elections of Jharkhand. pic.twitter.com/HIx3Lz0LwX

— Congress (@INCIndia) November 16, 2019

Professor Gourav Vallabh will contest the Jharkhand assembly elections against the current Chief Minister Raghubar Das.

Gourav Vallabh had joined the Congress in 2017. The former faculty member at the Xavier School of Management (XLRI) Jamshedpur became a prominent face of the party after his fiery TV debates and press conferences in the run-up to the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.

With this, the Congress has announced candidates for 27 assembly segments in Jharkhand.

On Monday, Congress announced the nominees for 19 seats in its third list. Among the candidates announced by the Congress in the third list, RC Prasad Mehta has been fielded from Hazaribagh and Sanjay Singh will contest from Bokaro assembly seat. Congress announced the names of one candidate in the second list and five candidates in the first list.

In the second list released by the Congress, it announced candidature of Devendra Singh Bittu from Panki constituency. The candidates announced in the first list are Rameshwar Oraon from Lohardaga, Ramchandra Singh from Manika, K N Tripathy from Daltonganj, Chandrashekhar Dubey from Bishrampur and KP Yadav from Bhawnathpur.

Earlier on November 8, the Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) announced that they will form an alliance to contest the upcoming polls in Jharkhand.

The decision was announced at a joint press conference by Congress Jharkhand in-charge RPN Singh and JMM executive president Hemant Soren.

Announcing the seat-sharing formula, Singh said, "JMM, Congress and RJD will fight on 43, 31 and 7 seats respectively."

Hemant Soren is the CM candidate of the alliance.

In the outgoing assembly election, the Congress has seven members while its ally Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has 19 seats.

The five-phase polling will be held on November 30, December 7, December 12, December 16 and December 20. The counting of votes will be held on December 23.