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Prakash Ambedkar to contest all seats in Lok Sabha polls
On Monday, while speaking to a Marathi television channel, Ambedkar said Congress has reduced to be a local level party with its influence reduced to just “bylanes”.
After seat sharing talks between the Congress-NCP alliance and the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi hit a road block last week, Ambedkar has announced that Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi under his leadership will contest all 48 seats in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha polls.
The announcement does not augur well for Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as it has potential to eat into their vote bank.
Speaking in Malshiras in Solapur district on Sunday evening, Ambedkar who is the president of Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) said that since the Congress party has failed to act on his proposal of giving 12 seats to Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, the alliance of smaller parties including BBM and All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has decided to contest all seats in Lok Sabha polls scheduled in April this year.
“We had asked for 12 seats from the Congress for Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and had asked them to take a call by January 30. However, the Congress has not responded. Therefore, we are going ahead with our plan to contest on all 48 seats in the state,” said Ambedkar. The BBM president also made it clear that he will announce the names of candidates from every constituency which he will be visiting in next few days.
On Monday, while speaking to a Marathi television channel, Ambedkar said Congress has reduced to be a local level party with its influence reduced to just “bylanes”.
“The Congress party has no strength left. Instead of negotiating with us, they should support us as they do not even have credible candidates in many constituencies ,” said Ambedkar.
Earlier the Congress leaders had opposed the alliance with BBM saying as long as it is aligned with “fundamentalist” parties like AIMIM, the Congress will not strike alliance with Ambedkar.
During talks with Ambedkar, the Congress expressed its willingness to give BMM only two seats instead of the 12 seats asked by Ambedkar. This led to the deadlock between the two parties.
