Acharia, Baby figure in CPI-M's second list for polls

New Delhi, Mar 14: Names of CPI(M)'s Lok Sabha leader Basudeb Acharia, Politburo member M A Baby and several sitting MPs figure in the second list of 49

for the upcoming elections in the party's strongholds of Tripura,

and Kerala released on Friday.

Former state Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta, former MPs Mohd Salim, Subhashini Ali and Sujan Chakraborty would also contest the general elections from West Bengal.

Baby is also a former parliamentarian. However, the CPI(M) candidates -- Sankar Prasad Datta and Jitendra Chowdhury -- from Tripura which has two seats are new and would replace Lok Sabha veterans like Bajuban Reang and Khagen Das.

Besides Acharia, as many as 20 of the 32 candidates the party has put up in West Bengal are new faces for the Lok Sabha polls. The sitting MPs, who would face electoral trial again are Mahendra Kumar Roy, Saman Pathak, Shakti Mohan Malik, Pulin Behari Baske, Susmita Bauri, Sk Saidul Haque, Bangsha Gopal Choudhury and Ramchandra Dom.

In Kerala, the party has put up 15 candidates including Baby. Sitting Lok Sabha members -- P Karunakaran, A Sampath, M B Rajesh and P K Biju -- also find a place in the list which has five independents supported by the major Left party.

With these 49 candidates, the total number of seats the CPI(M) would contest goes up to 73, with the party saying it would declare more names in a few days.

The first list contained names of 24 candidates it has put up in Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

PTI