Annoyed by the denial of its demand for seats in the Grand Alliance (GA), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has decided to go alone in Bihar and present candidates in 150 of the 243 seats for the next elections.
The party has already published a list of 32 candidates for the first phase of the elections in 71 seats.
“The list of candidates for the rest of the seats will be announced next week in consultation with the party in charge of Bihar and former Union minister Praful Patel,” said Kumar Gyanendra, media outlet in charge of the NCP in the state. .
“The NCP was willing to join the GA if it was allocated at least four seats against its demand from a dozen constituencies, where party candidates had performed reasonably well in the 2015 assembly elections,” said the main party leader, adding that they were waiting for a generous gesture from Congress.
Congress was initially ready to accommodate the PNC, but then things went wrong after the latter rejected the offer of just two seats.
“The first list of candidates was released in a hurry, as Congress delayed its response to our proposal. Some of the former MLA and prominent leaders of other parties can join the NCP and contest the second and third phase of the elections with the party symbols, ”said Gyanendra.
In the 2015 assembly elections, the PNC ranked second in the Katihar constituency of the Pranpur assembly and obtained reasonably good votes in four other Katihar districts and West Champaran districts such as Barari, Kodha, Rampur and Lauria.
At the time, the former Union Minister, Tariq Anwar, was the president of the state. However, Anwar left the NCP and joined Congress.
The PNC had contested 40 seats in the last assembly elections and obtained less than one percent of the votes.
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