The decision over seat sharing in the upcoming state Assembly elections would be taken only after having a discussion with the Congress high command, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) state president Sunil Tatkare has said.
The Congress-NCP coordination committee on Wednesday had a discussion over the upcoming Assembly elections. While the NCP was firm on its demand for 144 seats, the Congress party is not ready to accept their proposal of a 50-50 seat seat sharing formula.
But the Congress believes that there is no question of giving more seats to NCP. According to sources, Congress is willing to interchange some of its seats, while tickets would also be given to some independent candidates.
A few days ago on July 21, Tatakre had said that if the Congress would not give them 144 seats, NCP would contest all the seats independently. But on July 24 he tweeted, “We (Congress-NCP) will contest the Vidhan Sabha elections as an alliance.”
A few weeks ago, stating that NCP had won twice the number of seats as compared to Congress in Maharashtra in the recent Lok Sabha polls, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has sought equal number of seats for his party with Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls. He had also reiterated that if his party didn't get half the seats, it would contest all the 288 Assembly seats in the state.
Tatkare further added, “We insist to contest 144 seats. Co-ordination committee will meet again and a positive decision will be taken. NCP chief Sharad Pawar will hold a meeting with the party leaders over the issue of seat sharing. Also there is no proposal to form an alliance with the Samajwadi Party."
Meanwhile, Tatkare avoided any talk about Narayan Rane saying, “Narayan Rane is an internal issue of the Congress party, we have nothing to say about it.
NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said, “We are firm on 50-50 seat sharing. Whether our alliance remains or breaks, we will inform you.”
In the 2009 Assembly elections, NCP had won 62 seats of 113 contested, while the Indian National Congress had won 82 seats of 170 contested seats.
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