After days of wrangling over seats, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have firmed up a pre-poll tie-up in Goa, a move that has come as a morale booster for the scam-battered ruling alliance ahead of the March 3 elections in the state.
According to the seat-sharing
agreement reached between the two parties, the NCP will this time contest 7 seats, one up from 2007.
The Congress will contest the remaining 33 seats.
The NCP had initially escalated its demand from 6 to 12 seats but later scaled it down to 8 but the Congress was keen on repeating the 2007 formula. However, Congress managers finally decided to give one more seat to the NCP in the larger interest of the alliance.
The fact that coalition partner Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party was sending friendly signals to the BJP and did not seem to be interested in forging a pre-poll alliance with the Congress also helped clinch the NCP demand.
Though the seat-sharing deal with the NCP has addressed one of the major problems of returning to power in the state, a section in the Congress is worried that the continuation of chief minister Digambar Kamat, who is mired in illegal mining controversy, would hurt the party in the polls.
This section is of the opinion that some damage could have been controlled had the Congress repeated the BJP's formula in Uttarakhand where it changed its chief minister a few months ahead of the polls.
Apart from facing the strong anti-incumbency factor due to its non-performance, the Kamat government is on the mat over number of issues with the illegal mining scam topping the list.