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