By IANS
Ahmedabad : Following its alliance with the Congress party, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will contest nine seats in the forthcoming state assembly elections, Congress party sources said Wednesday.
The nine seats that the NCP will contest are Upleta, Mahuva, Gondal and Dhanduka in Saurashtra, Sarsa and Raopura in central Gujarat, and Rajgadh, Devgadh Baria and Umbergaon in south Gujarat, the sources said.
Though the two parties agreed on the number of seats the Congress would cede to the NCP, consensus could not be reached on the constituencies from which the NCP would contest. However, the agreement came through late Tuesday.
The difficulties arose as Congress workers were in no mood to have an alliance with the NCP for most of the seats, but they were later prevailed upon. In fact, the NCP was allotted the Modasa seat but the move was shelved as veteran Congress leader Madhusudhan Mistry opposed it.
By forging the alliance with the NCP, the Congress has avoided the splitting of its votes and prevented the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from winning seats by default.
In the 2002 polls, either the NCP or the Bahujan Samaj Party cut into the Congress votes in several constituencies. The splitting of votes went in favour of the BJP, which pushed the Congress party into the runner-up position.