New Delhi: Days after its political rivals, BJP and AAP, released their candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the Congress too is likely to unveil on Wednesday its first list of candidates for the biggest electoral exercise scheduled to be held in few weeks from now.

According to reports, Congress is likely to announce its first list for Lok Sabha polls after discussing candidates for a number of seats in Maharashtra, Gujarat & Uttar Pradesh.

The Congress’ Lok Sabha election campaign committee had met on Tuesday and is believed to have finalised the names of candidates for the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

Nandan Nilekani, former Infosys CEO and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman, who is a Congress trump card from Bangalore South constituency is also likely to feature in the list that will be released today.

The meeting of Congress election committee was chaired by party president Sonia Gandhi where the names of probable candidates for the three states having 154 seats (80 in UP, 48 in Maharashtra and 26 in Gujarat) was discussed.

The party is also believed to have received inputs from the Scrutiny Committees from the states concerned.

The party has decided not to filed any candidate facing any grave criminal charges. Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, party Vice President Rahul Gandhi are among the top leaders who are members of the committee which decides the nominations.

The first meeting of the CEC had taken place on February 17. Today’s meeting took place a day before Election Commission is to announce the poll dates.

Early finalisation of candidates for elections was a key recommendation of the AK Antony Committee, which Rahul is keen to implement in the General Elections.

Party leaders have been maintaining that the nominations for those seats will be finalised early which are at present not with the Congress. The party had won 206 seats in the last Lok Sabha polls.

Candidate selection process has been fast tracked this time unlike in recent decades when the nominees were finalised at the last minute. The idea was to ensure that candidates get least two months’ time to prepare for the elections.