MUMBAI: The Congress on Thursday finalised its 70 candidates for the forthcoming Assembly election in Maharashtra, leader of opposition Vijay Wadettiwar said.
Wadettiwar, who attended the meeting of party’s scrutiny committee along with state unit president Balasaheb Thorat and Manikrao Thakre in said, the party leaders discussed all the 110 seats in the state today where it has no dispute with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
While in case of 70 seats the list has been sent to the party’s central committee for finalisation and regarding the remaining seat decision would be made in a few days time. “I expect the complete least to be finalised by September 10,” Wadettiwar said.
The meeting conducted by senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia at 15 GRG road was attended by AICC General Secretary in charge of Maharashtra Mallikarjun Kharge, AICC secretary Rajiv Satav, former Chief Ministers Ashok Chavan and Sushilkumar Shinde etc.
The seat-sharing formula between the Congress and NCP has been finalised. Both the parties will contest 125 seats each. Of these, there is a dispute on 15 seats and hence only 110 seats were taken into consideration for today’s meeting, said senior Congress leader Hussain Dalwai.
Seats of most of the seating MLAs were finalized during today’s meeting, said former CM and state unit head Ashok Chavan.
“The discussions were very positive regarding one to one alliance. There was no discussion regarding an alliance with Prakash Ambedkar’s VBA. However, we haven’t yt closed the chapter. We are open but Ambedkar is not positive,” Chavan said.
Another senior Congress leader in the state, Harshwardhan Patil, who feels cornered by the NCP, at a rally at Indapur on Wednesday had indicated that he might join BJP. In reference to that Chavan said that discussions have been held with Pawar who was very positive about resolving the impasse.
He also made it clear that there was no discussion regarding accepting Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) as the alliance partner.