‘Congress will field more surprise candidates for local body polls in Kerala’

Youth Congress State president O.J. Janeesh has said that the Congress will field “more surprise candidates” for the upcoming local body polls in Kerala.

Addressing the media here on Tuesday, he said that the party had been able to release the first list of its candidates for the elections to the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation much ahead of the declaration of the poll schedule. K.S. Sabarinathan, former MLA, and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary, and functionaries of the Youth Congress and the Kerala Students’ Union, among others, were on the list. The Congress would field candidates in a similar manner in other local bodies as well, he said. “For the local body polls as well as the Assembly election, we have informed the Congress leadership that the Youth Congress is willing to contest in both winnable seats and constituencies that pose a challenge to the party,” he said.

Mr. Janeesh, meanwhile, claimed that the police in Kozhikode were trying to frame false charges against activists of the United Democratic Front related to the protest in Perambra and the agitation against a poultry waste rendering plant in Thamarassery. Two activists of the Youth Congress and the Muslim Youth League were recently arrested after fresh charges were made against them related to the Perambra protest. Similar was the case in Thamarassery. Mr. Janeesh claimed that attempts were being made to suppress people’s agitations in areas once considered to be strongholds of the CPI(M).