Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president, Sharad Pawar, has said his party and the Congress has reached a eal on 240 of the 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra. The state Assembly election is scheduled to be held later this year.
He added the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) was considering to boycott the Assembly election due to reservations on the electronic voting machines (EVMs).
Talking to reporters in Pune, Pawar added leaders of both the principal Opposition parties would now speak to other groups like the Swambhimani Paksha for the remaining seats.
“The NCP and the Congress have reached an understanding on 240 seats for the state Assembly election,” he said. Pawar said the seat-sharing talks will be over and the constituency-wise list of candidates will be readied over the next few days.
Speaking on the MNS joining the Congress-NCP alliance, the NCP president said, “I met some MNS leaders in Mumbai. Recently, Raj Thackeray met Sonia Gandhi.
The MNS leaders have strong feelings against EVMs and they feel some decision needs to be taken in this regard. The MNS is in favour of boycotting the election, but this is not acceptable to us,” he said.
He added a lot of parties at the national-level were against the use of EVMs in elections and the matter is in the court. “But no one has reached a decision to boycott the elections,” he said.
