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Congress to finalise seat-sharing for Maharashtra assembly polls in September
Senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia chaired the meeting and asked the state unit to identify three candidates for each seat that the Congress will fight.
The Congress is keen on finalising its candidates for the assembly elections in Maharashtra by the third week of September. It has asked its state unit to immediately seal a seat-sharing deal with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a Congress functionary said on Thursday.
The issues of seat-sharing and candidate selection for the polls due later this year were discussed at the first meeting of the Congress’s screening committee in Delhi on Thursday.
Senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia chaired the meeting and asked the state unit to identify three candidates for each seat that the Congress will fight.
As per the initial discussions, the Congress is likely to contest 144 out of the 288 assembly seats. The remaining seats will go to the NCP and other parties.
The committee told the state leaders to immediately firm up the seat-sharing deal with the NCP so that the Congress finalises its candidates by the third week of September, the functionary cited above said.
Congress’s Maharashtra in-charge Mallikarjun Kharge, state unit chief Balasaheb Thorat and Lok Sabha member Manickam Tagore also attended the meeting.
“The discussions were mainly held on seat distribution,” Thorat said. He added the next meeting will be held on September 5.
The Congress and NCP contested the 2014 assembly polls separately after sharing power for 15 years in the state. The two parties had parted ways following disagreements over seat-sharing.
The Congress bagged 42 seats while the NCP 41. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party with 122 seats and the Shiv Sena, which also fought separately, secured 63.
In the April-May Lok Sabha elections, the Congress managed to get just one seat and NCP four. The BJP won 23 seats and its alliance partner Shiv Sena 18.
Elections in Maharashtra will be held along with Haryana and Jharkhand in October-November this year.
