Mega War for silicon city Bangalore

After much dilly-dallying, the Congress finally came out with its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, with party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi leading the big names.

Infosys co-founder-turned-Aadhaar-chairman Nandan Nilekani will take on the BJP's sitting MP Ananth Kumar in Bangalore South, as was widely expected. A surprise pick is cricketer Mohammad Kaif, who will try his luck from Phulpur, a constituency once represented by Jawaharlal Nehru.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar (Sasaram), AB Vajpayee's niece Karuna Shukla (Bilaspur) and former Odisha chief justice NY Hanumanthappa (Bellary) are the other prominent names in the list of 194 candidates, which includes 24 sitting ministers and 60 of the ruling party's 201 sitting MPs.

The list takes into account gender and youth factors with 15% of candidates being women and 35% below 50 years of age. It has also declared candidates for 50 of the 80 seats in the key political state of Uttar Pradesh but left out Varanasi — which is expected to see a Narendra Modi-versus-Arvind Kejriwal clash.

Sonia will run for a fourth term from Rae Bareli while this will be Rahul's third election from Amethi.

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