NCP to decide 2014 candidates for Maharashtra on Jan 5-6

Keen to continue electoral pact with Congress but ready to go alone if seat sharing formula is not reached

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo and agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar on Monday announced that the party, currently in power in Maharashtra, will hold a two-day meeting of its senior leaders and office bearers here on January 5 and 6 to decide candidates in the state for the 2014 general elections.

The proposed meeting is notwithstanding the seat-sharing arrangement being finalised between the NCP and its alliance partner in Maharashtra, the Congress. The proposed meeting also takes place at a time when the Congress-NCP government faces crisis after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi distanced himself from the state cabinet's decision to reject a judicial commission's report on the Adarsh housing society scam.

“Our party is for the 22:26 seat-sharing formula whereby the NCP would contest 22 seats and the Congress, the remaining 26. There are, in all, 48 Lok Sabha seats and winning every seat is quite crucial for both the Congress and the NCP, especially when the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi have already launched a nation wide campaign,” said an NCP leader, who would be present at the proposed meeting.

Pawar and state unit chief Bhaskar Jadhav clarified that the NCP was quite keen to have an electoral alliance with the Congress on the lines of the 22:26 formula, which was implemented in the last general elections.

An NCP minister, who did not want to identified, said during the meeting, a list of  party candidates for 22 seats would be finalised. After that, the party high command would hold talks with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the names of candidates would be announced in January itself so that they get sufficient time to approach voters in their respective constituencies.

However, Jadhav said if the Congress disagreed with the 22:26 formula, the NCP was prepared to go alone.

During the 2009 elections, the NCP had won eight out of the 22 seats in its quota, while the Congress bagged 17 of the 26 that it contested.

The NCP has already announced that its ministers from the Prithviraj Chavan-led council of ministers in Maharashtra, Chhagan Bhujbal (Public Works), Manohar Naik (Food & Drugs Administration) and Sunil Tatkare (Water Resources) would be given candidature from Nashik, Wasim and Raigad constituencies respectively. Pawar, who was elected from the Madha constituency in Solapur district in south Maharashtra in 2009, has already declared his intention to retire from electoral politics and enter the Rajya Sabha. In Madha, the NCP would nominate former deputy chief minister and present legislator Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, who enjoys adequate clout in the sugarcane-rich district.