Mumbai, Sep 30 (IANS): Kickstarting the Maharashtra Assembly elections process, the Congress will start conducting interviews of a huge number of aspirants for a poll ticket in different regions of the state, for a week from October 1, a party office bearer said here on Monday.

A total of staggering 1,688 hopefuls have submitted their formal applications for the 288 Assembly seats in the state after paying the requisite fees, indicating the keen interest among people in plunging into electoral politics.

The non-refundable fees were SC/ST/Women applicants (Rs 10,000 each) and Open Category applicants (Rs 20,000 each), though the exact number of applications received in different categories, or from sitting or past legislators, was not available.

The preliminary interviews shall be conducted by a team of 40 bigwigs in Mumbai, Konkan, Northern Maharashtra, Western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in the state, as directed by Congress General Secretary Ramesh Chennithala and Congress state President Nana F. Patole.

After conducting the interviews and the potential winning prospects for each applicant/s till October 8, the interviewing leaders would submit their report to the state party high command for further processing, said state Congress Vice-President Nana Gawande.

A couple of months ago, the Congress invited applications from any interested persons for party tickets in the constituency of their choice, with the prime criteria being the 'winnable factor', besides other terms and conditions.

Gawande said that the confidential reports of the aspirants would be submitted to the state party leadership on October 10, after which a final decision would be taken on the successful applications.

Among the senior party leaders and elected representatives who would conduct the interviews exercise in different regions, include Working President M. Arif Naseem Khan, MPs Chandrakant Handore, Praniti Shinde, Namdev Kirsan, Kalyan Kale, Shubha Bachhav and others.

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, former ministers Satel Bunty Patil, Nitin Raut, Suresh Shetty, Amit Deshmukh, Yashomati Thakur, Satish Chaturvedi, besides Hussain Dalwai, Vishwajit Kadam, Wajahat Mirza, and MLAs/MLCs shall also be involved in the marathon interview sessions.