All sitting Congress MLAs would be repeated in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls.

Sources revealed this following the Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting, which was chaired by Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi at her residence, recently.

A senior party source present at the two-&-half-hour plus meeting, on the condition of anonymity, told media, “All sitting Congress MLAs are going to be repeated in the Assembly polls.”

The meeting was attended by party General Secretaries K.C. Venugopal, Ambika Soni, VeerappaMoily, JyotiradityaScindia, Ahmed Patel, MallikarjunaKharge, who is also state in-charge, besides several Maharashtra leaders.

Speaking to the media later, Kharge said 90 per cent of the names, sent by the screening committee to the CEC, were accepted. The screening committee would meet again on September 17 and the CEC on September 18 in which a lot of other names would be discussed, he added.

To a question if Raj Thackrey’s Maharashtra NirmanSena will be part of the alliance in the state, he said, “There was no discussion on Thackrey’s party.”

In the 2014 elections, the BJP came to power by winning 122 seats in the 288 member Assembly, while the party’s ally Shiv Sena won 62 seats.

The Congress and the NCP bagged 42 and 41 seats, respectively. The Congress and the NCP were now looking for a comeback in the state.

However, both the parties have faced deserting from several senior party leaders. Actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar, who contested unsuccessfully from North Mumbai had quit the party last week.

After Matondkar, former Minister and senior Congress leader Kripa Shankar Singh also quit the party.