Basudeb Acharia, Jyotirmoyee Sikdar among those re-nominated

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Yet to finalise candidates in southern States
Only three women in first list

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NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Sunday released its first list of candidates for 60 seats for the Lok Sabha elections. It has fielded as many as 12 new faces in West Bengal and re-nominated 14 sitting members.
The party that won 26 of the 42 seats in 2004 has shifted Ram Chandra Dom from Birbhum to contest from Bolpur, which has become a reserved seat after delimitation. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee represents the constituency in the outgoing House.
Leader of the party in the Lok Sabha Basudeb Acharia (Bankura), chief whip Rup Chand Pal (Hooghly), senior leader Hannan Mollah (Uluberia) and the former athlete, Jyotirmoyee Sikdar, (Krishnanagar) are among those re-nominated in the list of 32 candidates from West Bengal.
The others include Tarit Baran Topdar (Barrackpur), Amitava Nandy (Dum Dum)Sujan Chakraborty (Jadavpur), Mohammed Salim (Kolkata North), Swadesh Chakraborty (Howrah), Santashree Chaterjee (Sreerampur), Lakshman Seth (Tamluk), Prasanta Pradhan (Contai) and Susmita Bauri (Bishnupur-reserved).
Party general secretary Prakash Karat said the party was yet to finalise candidates in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka as talks were on with allies.

Regarding reports of differences in Kerala, he said it was normal in the course of discussion to have divergent views. The State unit would meet next week to work on the candidates.
‘Gearing up’ He said while the Left would contest the polls as one, the coming elections have other factors that made the challenge tougher. “We are gearing up politically and organisationally to face it.”

The party also decided to field candidates in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, (Barpeta, Silchar and Tezpur), Bihar (Supaul, Ujiarpur, Bhagalpur, Nawada, Champaram West), Chattisgarh (Sarguja-ST), Gujarat (Dahod-ST, and Rajkot), Haryana (Sirsa-SC), Himachal Pradesh (Mandi), Jharkhand (Rajmahal-ST, Ranchi), Madhya Pradesh (Morena), Maharashtra (Dindori-ST, and Palghar-ST), Punjab (Anandpur Sahib), Rajasthan (Sikar, Bikaner-SC, Sri Ganganagar-SC), Tripura (West and East), Uttar Pradesh (Ferozabad and Azamgarh), Uttarakhand (Tehri).