Kerala: Congress fields Muraleedharan in Thrissur, Venugopal to contest from Alappuzha

Palakkad MLA Shafi Parambil to contest from Vadakara

CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Congress released its first list of 39 candidates to contest the Lok Sabha elections. The list includes the names of 16 candidates to contest the polls from Kerala. AICC General Secretary General Secretary K.C. Venugopal will be contesting from Alappuzha, while Palakkad MLA Shafi Parambil will contest from Vadakara. The party has retained most of the sitting MPs except Thrissur MP T.N.Prathapan.

Vadakara sitting MLA K. Muraleedharan, son of former Kerala CM K. Karunakaran, will contest from Thrissur this time. He will be up against BJP's candidate, Malayalam popular actor Suresh Gopi and CPI's candidate V.S. Sunilkumar.

Recently, Muraleedharan's sister Padmaja Venugopal quit the party and joined BJP amid the heated LS polls candidature discussions. “Padamaja’s exit from the party will not affect Congress in any way and BJP will not be opening an account here. No more members will be leaving the party as she did,” said Congress senior leader Ramesh Chennithala while talking to reporters.

Meanwhile, though Shafi had expressed his displeasure in contesting Vadakara, leaving his MLA post in Palakkad, he had told the media that he would abide by the High Command's decision.