Gandhinagar, Oct 12 (IANS): The Congress on Monday announced five of its candidates for seats left vacant due to the legislators resigning and some defecting to the BJP.

Due to the resignations of its MLAs, 8 Assembly seats were left vacant for which the bye-elections will be held on November 3. There are 8 seats left vacant due to the resignations of Congress legislators, which eventually benefited the ruling BJP party to gain an extra seat in the upper house of the Parliament, that of Narhari Amin.

The Assembly seats of Abdasa, Limbdi, Morbi, Dhari, Gadhada (SC) Karjan, Dangs (ST) and Kaprada were left vacant due to the Congress legislators tendering their resignations. The Congress high command on Monday finalised and announced 5 of the 8 candidates for the upcoming bypolls.

The party will be fielding Shantilal Sanghani from Abdasa, Jayantibhai Patel from Morbi, Suresh Kotadiya from Dhari, Mohanbhai Solanki from Gadhada and Kiritsinh Jadeja from Karjan constituency. The Congress is yet to announce candidates for the Kaprada, Dangs and Limdi seats.

Out of the 8 MLAs from Congress who quit, 5 MLAs, Pradyumansinh Jadeja from Abdasa, JV Kakadiya from Dhari, Brijesh Merja from Morbi, Akshay Patel from Karjan and Jeetu Chaudhary from Kaprada who defected to the BJP were given tickets to contest from their original constituencies from the saffron party and these names were announced on Sunday.

The BJP also fielded former state minister Atmaram Parmar from the Gadhada (SC) seat and the former legislator Vijay Patel from the Dangs constituencies.

The saffron party too, is yet to announce its candidate for the Limdi constituency. The other three MLA from Congress who had resigned, Soma Patel from Limdi, Mangal Gavit from Dangs and Praveen Maru from Gadhada have still not joined any party.