Gujarat polls: NCP to contest all 182 seats as talks with Congress fail

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Monday said it will contest all 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections, after talks for alliance between the Sharad Pawar-led party and the Congress failed.

In 2007 and 2012, the NCP and the Congress had fought the state elections in alliance. In the present Assembly, the NCP has two MLAs.

The Congress alleged that the alliance broke down because of the NCP's demand for more seats than it should have in the prevalent situation in the poll-bound state.

Senior NCP leader Praful Patel said, "We will fight on all the 182 seats. We will release our candidates list today."
 

"I think it would be better for us to fight for all the seats on our own than in alliance with the Congress," the former Union minister said here.

The NCP is expected to announce the first list of its candidates later in the day.

Last night, the Congress, in its first list of 77 candidates, had also named contestants on seats which were demanded by the NCP, including the Kutiyana constituency in Porbandar district from where Kandhal Jadeja is the sitting MLA of the Sharad Pawar-led party.

The Congress state in-charge, Ashok Gehlot, today said that "the NCP should have demanded seats as per their situation in Gujarat".

"The seat-sharing alliance would have been possible only if they had made limited demands," he told reporters.

The polling for the two-phase elections in Gujarat will take place on December 9 and 14 and votes will be counted on December 18.