By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : The Congress will contest 17 of Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha seats, according to the seat-sharing formula the United Democratic Front (UDF) decided Tuesday.
The UDF liaison committee met here and decided which party will contest which seat, UDF convenor P.P. Thankachen told reporters here, adding that the talks went off smoothly.
“The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) will get two seats while one seat will go to Kerala Congress-Mani (KC-M) and the rest will be for the Congress.
“Taking into consideration the requests by allies we have decided that when the candidate for the Vadakara seat is selected, if possible a common candidate would be fielded,” said Thankachen.
The seat-sharing formula is similar to the norm the UDF followed in the past several elections.
IUML has been allocated Ponanni and Malappuram, while KC-M gets the prestigious Kottayam seat, which was traditionally a Congress seat. The KC-M has been contesting the Muvattupuzha seat for long, but it has been eliminated in the delimitation process.
In the 2004 general elections, the UDF suffered its worst defeat when all except one of its candidates were defeated. The lone victor was E. Ahmed of the IUML.
UDF is the main opposition in Kerala where the Left Democratic Front (LDF), led by the Communist Party of India – Marxist, is in power.