Ahead of state assembly election, the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and their smaller allies have fielded candidates against each other.
According to Hindustan Times, Congress and NCP claim smaller parties like Swabhimani Sangathana, Peasants and Workers Party, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Samajwadi Party are part of their grand alliance. These parties claim the Congress-NCP did not keep its promises and fielded candidates or have allowed rebels opposite their candidates.
Raju Shetti, chief of Swabhimani Paksha, told the leading daily, “We had asked for five seats, but we were given three seats and two of them have rebels from the Congress and NCP. We withdrew our nomination from one constituency on the Congress’s request, but the Congress continued its nomination in Nandurbar against our candidate. This cannot be called an alliance, but we will consider whether to continue to be part of it after the elections.”
While the BJP had a peculiar problem of surplus candidates, Congress and NCP have been seen struggling to find the appropriate candidates to pose a challenge to the ruling BJP-Sena in most constituencies. The Congress had to also increase its number of candidates for the election as talks to contest the polls with smaller parties have all failed. The party had originally planned to field 125 candidates but has finally come up with a list of 155.
The Congress-NCP alliance too has been chaotic with both parties asking for more seats than the other. Earlier both parties had jointly announced that they would each contest 125 seats leaving 38 for smaller allies. However, Congress ended up declaring candidates for 147 seats in all, assuming the big brother status in the alliance.
