Communist Party Central Committee Presidium unanimously votes to grant Grudinin Alferov's Duma seat
MOSCOW. March 18 (Interfax) - The Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation approved the handover of Zhores Alferov's vacated parliamentary seat to Pavel Grudinin, the director of the Lenin State Farm company and a former presidential candidate, on Monday, an Interfax correspondent reported.
"The decision to grant the seat to Grudinin was unanimous," Vadim Solovyov, the head of the Communist Party legal department, told Interfax.
Communist Party spokesperson Alexander Yushchenko, in turn, told Interfax that relevant documents were to be submitted to the Central Elections Commission as early as Monday.
Last week, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told Interfax that the Presidium of the party's Central Committee "shares the opinion that Pavel Grudinin should be the one [to whom the Duma seat should be given]," although other candidates were considered.
Alferov, a former Duma deputy from the Communist Party faction and a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics, died aged 88 on March 1, 2019. The Duma ruled on March 7 to terminate Alferov's mandate.
Alferov was elected to the State Duma on a federal ticket, and so the Communist Party's authorized body is entitled to nominate any candidate on this ticket to be endorsed by the Central Elections Commission.
Grudinin was elected chairman of the Council of Deputies in the town of Vidnoye outside Moscow in September 2017.
He ran for president as the Communist Party's candidate in 2018.
The Vidnoye Council of Deputies dismissed him from his office as chairman on February 14, 2019 and terminated his mandate on February 26, 2019.