Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan and several top officials who once worked closely with ousted party boss Bo Xilai are among the 50 people on the municipality's delegate shortlist for the Communist Party congress later this year.
The list won't be finalised until Chongqing's party congress next month but analysts said the inclusion of the officials in the final vetting process was a sign that they would likely survive the Bo scandal unscathed.
As expected, Bo was not on the list in yesterday's Chongqing Daily. Bo was suspended from the party's elite Politburo and is being investigated by the party's top disciplinary agency.
The announcement coincided with a South China Morning Post report that Huang, once closely allied with Bo, challenged the then party chief over his sacking of former police chief Wang Lijun .
After his sacking ,Wang sought refuge at the US consulate in Chengdu and spoke to the party's top anti-graft watchdog about his former boss, triggering Bo's removal and one of the most wide-reaching political scandals on the mainland in decades.
Also absent from the list are Chongqing's new party boss, Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang, and the city's new police chief and vice-mayor, He Ting. But Zhang is also a Politburo member and Beijing could arrange for him to be elected a congress delegate by a different province or municipality.
Beijing-based political analyst Chen Ziming said this had been the case in the past for sitting Politburo members. This was also the case for security tsar and Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, who was rumoured to have been sidelined because of his links to the Bo scandal. Zhou was a Hebei delegate at the last party congress but is representing Xinjiang this year.