Mixed outcome for Congress,BJP in seatsharing with allies

Mixed outcome for Congress,BJP in seatsharing with allies

New Delhi (PTI): Seat sharing woes for NDA allies--the BJP and Shiv Sena continued while the Congress-Trinamool alliance was finally on firm grounds after they announced candidates but the Congress struggled to hammer out a seat-sharing formula with NCP.

A formal announcement over seat-sharing between the Shiv Sena and BJP did not materialise with a meeting of senior leaders of the saffron alliance in Mumbai failing to break the impasse.

"There are still some issues... I don't want to add to them," senior Sena leader Manohar Joshi told reporters. While no one from the Sena camp has so far come on record on the seats the party would be contesting, Mr. Joshi had recently said BJP would be contesting 26 seats and the Sena would be fielding its nominees for the remaining 22.

For the Congress, its much-awaited electoral alliance with Congress became a reality with both parties announcing their list of candidates after a week of hard bargaining. TC and Congress will contest 27 and 14 seats respectively. NCP supremo Shard Pawar said the seat sharing formula with the Congress for 48 seats was being finalised and would be announced soon.

Both the parties have been at loggerheads over the issue of seat adjustment with the NCP demanding more than 21 seats it had contested in the last election.

The crisis in the ruling LDF in Kerala over seat-sharing deepened with front constituents CPI and Janata Dal, rejecting CPI-M's gameplan to take away Ponnani and Kozhikode seats from the allies. The leaders of the two parties, who came out after the LDF liaison committee meeting here, said no headway had been made in the talks.

While the CPI wanted Ponnani seat, the CPI(M) had proposed a common independent candidate to be put up there to mobilise Muslim votes in the IUML stronghold. In the case of Kozhikode, the senior partner wanted to field its nominee overruling the Janta Dal (S) claim over the seat which it won last time.

The deadlock over seat sharing has snowballed into a major issue, damaging the image of the front with both the CPI and JD (S) threatening to take tough measures in case their demands were not met.