Puducherry Congress president V Vithilingam on Friday released the party’s list of 16 candidates for the upcoming 2026 Assembly elections.
According to the list, DBR Selvam will contest from Manadipattu, while P Karthikeyan will contest from Osudu. Other prominent candidates include N Raja Kumar from Indiranagar, V Vaithilingam from Thattanchavady, PK Devadas from Kamarajnagar and M Vaidyanathan from Lawspet. G Rajendran from Muthialpet, J Vijayalakshmi from Ariyankuppam and RKR Anandaraman from Manavely will contest.
The party has also fielded M Kandasamy from Embalam, G Anparasan from Nettapkkam, Dinesh Kumar from Nedungadu, R Kamalakannan from Thirunallar and AM Ranjith from Karaikal North. In Mahe, Ramesh Parampath has been named as the candidate, while Kollapalli Srinivas Ashok will contest from Yanam.
The announcement comes on the heels of the seat-sharing agreement reached earlier this week between the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), under which the Congress will contest 16 of the 30 seats, while the DMK will contest the remaining 14 constituencies.
“We will share seats among the alliance parties in the 14 seats reserved for the DMK,” said Jagadrakshajan, the party’s Puducherry election in-charge.
The Congress and the DMK are also alliance partners in Tamil Nadu, where the party led by Prime Minister MK Stalin has allotted the Congress 28 of the 234 seats for the 2026 Assembly elections.
In the 2021 Puducherry Assembly elections, AINRC emerged as the largest party with 10 seats, followed by DMK with six seats, while the BJP and Congress won six seats each. Voting participation rate was 84.8 percent.
While in the 2016 elections, Congress got majority with 15 seats, AINRC got eight seats, AIADMK got four seats and DMK got two seats, with voter turnout standing at 83.6 per cent.
