Mahila Congress' state chief Jebi Mather is the party's Rajya Sabha candidate in Kerala.
The Congress has finalised Jebi Mather as the candidate for the lone Rajya Sabha seat the party expects to win from Kerala in the March 31 elections.
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) announced the decision Saturday night. Mather is the president of the State Mahila Congress as well as the vice-chairperson of the Aluva municipality.
She was selected by the AICC after the candidate selection became trouble for the party's state unit as a good number of leaders staked a claim for the lone seat. In selecting 43-year-old Mather, Congress has addressed the question of women's and youth's representation in parliamentary posts.
A member of the prominent Mather family in Kochi, who are traditionally Congress supporters, Jebi has politics in her blood. She was a secretary of the National Youth Congress and a municipal councillor before. Mather also headed the training division of AICC in several states like Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Assam and Rajasthan during 2011 -15.
She was appointed the Mahila Congress's state president in December after the post remained vacant for months following the dramatic resignation of Lathika Subhash ahead of the assembly polls. Lathika had quit the post in protest against being denied a seat to contest the elections. She later joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The Congress decided to fix Mather as the Rajya Sabha candidate after the ruling CPM and CPI chose young leaders A A Rahim and P Santhosh Kumar, respectively, for the seats.
Those who staked a claim for the Congress seat include senior leaders K V Thomas, M M Hassan and Mullappally Ramachandran, civil servant-turned politician Sreenivasan Krishnan and former Alappuzha DCC president M Liju. The KPCC had reportedly submitted a shortlist of three names -- Mather, Liju and Jaison Joseph -- to the high command.
