BMC polls: NCP, Congress approach high commands

As the local leaders of Congress and NCP are unable to solve their differences over seat sharing for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections (BMC), both parties have decided to lob the ball in their respective high command's courts.

At least five rounds of negotiations have been held between leaders of the NCP and Congress so far, which were attended among others by the State Public Works Minister Chaggan Bhujbal, state NCP President Arun Gujrati, State Finance Minister Jayant Patil, Mumbai Congress president and MP Gurudas Kamat, and State Minister for Social Welfare Chandrakant Handore. But the meetings failed to break the deadlock.

In fact, both sides are threatening to go alone in the polls, but both the parties' central leaderships are insisting on a tie-up.

Sources in the NCP said Union Minister of State for Aviation Praful Patel from the NCP and Congress in-charge general secretary Margaret Alva were likely to meet on Wednesday and sort out the differences in a day or two as the process for filing nomination papers is beginning from January 8.

The Congress is not ready to give more than 55 seats to the NCP, out of the total 227. On the other hand, the NCP is demanding that it would not settle for anything less than 75, as it wants at least one seat in every Assembly segment of the city.

Meanwhile, it was also learnt that both parties have decided to go it alone in six out of the 10 municipal corporations where they think the saffron combine is too weak to affect their prospects.

The municipal corporations in which these parties would go alone include Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Nagpur, Akola and Amravati. The four municipal corporations in which both the parties want to have an alliance are Mumbai, Thane, Nasik and Ulhasnagar.