Elections Falling Apart For The Congress? Sharad Pawar’s NCP To Contest All 26 Seats in Gujarat

Giving Congress a crude jolt, Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Thursday (28 March) announced that it will be contesting in all 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat. Though both Congress and NCP also say that there is still scope for an alliance as the last day for filing nominations is 4 April.

"NCP will go ahead and announce its candidates for all 26 seats in the next two to three days," NCP state chief Jayant Patel said. If an alliance does not workout, this could be a spoiler for Congress on the lines of 2017 state assembly polls, when the anti-BJP votes got divided among the two parties, leading to a win for none.

Then too the parleys between two parties had collapsed at the last minute. That resulted into NCP fielding 58 candidates and scoring a win on one, while costing Congress five assemby seats - Prantij, Dholka, Umreth, Fatehpura and Dangs - by eating into its vote share.

Previously, NCP and Congress have fought Lok Sabha elections together as alliance partners in 2004 and 2014 in the state of Gujarat. In 2004, Congress left the Rajkot seat and later in 2014 Congress left the Porbandar seat, each of which NCP lost.

As part of seat-sharing formula for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, NCP had sought Porbandar, Panchmahal and Gandhinagar seats.