7 November 2002

CONG TO GIVE TICKET TO MOST MEMBERS OF DISSOLVED HOUSE

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: The Congress will be fielding most of its 65 MLAs in the dissolved Gujarat Assembly in the upcoming elections and "winnability" was the prime criteria used by the Congress central steering committee in shortlisting candidates for rest of the seats at its marathon sitting ending late Wednesday night.

The party is, however, leaving out 12 of the 182 seats for seat adjustment with other parties to put up a united front against the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party.

Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan, Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav are the parties with which the Congress wants "adjustment" but no electoral alliance. The NCP sources indicated that they will not accept the humiliating unilateral offer of sharing few seats with other parties.

"We are forwarding names to the Congress President for convening a meeting of the Central Election Committee either next Tuesday or Wednesday to finalise the candidates. In any case our list will be out by November 15," AICC General Secretary (incharge Gujarat) Kamal Nath said on Thursday.

The steering committee, headed by senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee, had two rounds of sittings at the Chhattisgarh Bhawan to clear the names. PCC chief Shankarsinh Vaghela, who attended the meeting, had an upper hand in selection of the candidates, though not many of them are from his erstwhile party that he had merged into Congress, the party sources said.

Others who attended the steering committee meetings included senior Congress leaders Arjun Singh and P M Sayeed, AICC General Secreary Kamal Nath, AICC Secretary Shelja, former Chief Minister Amarsinh Chaudhary and Rajya Sabha MP Suresh Pachauri from Madhya Pradesh who is touring Gujarat as an AICC observer and assisting Kamal Nath in scrutinising the long list of aspirants.

Seats to be left out uncontested have, however, not been identified yet as Vaghela did not complete the negotiations with other like-minded parties as expected before the steering committee meeting and hence candidates have been shortlisted for all seats, the sources said.

Vaghela was supposed to meet former Gujarat Finance Minister Sanat Mehta regarding the understanding with the NCP but Mehta told this correspondent on phone from Vadodara that he had no meeting or discussion with Vaghela and that the NCP may prefer to contest on its own instead of conceding to the Congress move to give just a few seats.

Sanatbhai, however, made it clear that the NCP contesting on some 70 seats would not harm the Congress or help the BJP by dividing the anti-BJP votes as NCP would not field candidates against seats won last time by the Congress and concentrate mostly in Saurashtra and Kutch where the Congress has little base and where 52 of the 88 seats had gone to BJP last time. NCP also aims to field candidates for all seven seats in Dahod district.

Meanwhile, the huge crowd of the ticket aspirants and their supporters who were camping in Delhi since Tuesday for lobbying returned to Gujarat on Thursday and so did both Vaghela and Amarsinh who flew back by the morning flight. END