To continue alliance for Lok Sabha polls
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Bringing the political drama to an end, traditional alliance partners ~ Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ~ on Sunday announced that they would continue their coalition in Goa for the ensuing Lok Sabha polls. The reason given was to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at bay.
In a joint press conference held this evening to announce the pre-poll alliance, NCP pledged support to both the Congress candidates ~ Ravi Naik in North and Alexio Reginaldo Lourenco in South ~ withdrawing the names of their candidates announced earlier ~ Nilkant Halarnkar and Yuri Alemao.
The alliance partners also expressed the possibility of forming a co-ordination committee to work together with similar ideology for the parliamentary elections.
NCP President Halarnkar said the high command had asked them to support the Congress candidates in both ~ North and South Goa ~ constituencies for the LS polls. “The sole aim of the alliance is to defeat communal BJP,” he said. Halarnkar, earlier this week, had met Sharad Pawar and Prafulla Patel over continuing with the alliance.
Admitting that all was not well between the alliance partners soon after the March 2012 Assembly elections, Halarnkar said, ‘this is an opportunity to establish Congress-NCP base in Goa… the alliance is looking at good results this time”.
The NCP, had earlier decided to part ways with the Congress and contest both the seats as talks between both the high commands were yet to begin.
“We had decided to go independently because talks had not started between both the party high commands and we were asked to keep our candidates ready for both the constituencies,” Halarnkar said.
Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) President John Fernandes said both parties are united and will win against BJP candidates.
“NCP and Congress have always been friends… there were some political issues, but now we will work together against our only enemy, BJP,” Fernandes said.
As reported by Herald earlier, it was confirmed that NCP has been awarded an additional seat in Karnataka in lieu of the Goa seat. The ticket is likely to be given to son-in-law of Prafulla Patel. Further, there is also talk of NCP in Goa being in line for the Dabolim seat ~ apparently to be contested by Jose Philip D’Souza ~ for the 2017 assembly elections.
Congress’ candidates Naik, Lourenco and NCP chief spokesperson Trajano D’Mello were also present at the press briefing.
Meanwhile, BJP’s alliance partner ~ the MGP ~ has announced its support to the saffron party who has fielded Sripad Naik from North and Narendra Sawaikar from South.
NCP pledged support to Cong candidates ~ Ravi Naik in North and Alexio Reginaldo in South ~ withdrawing the names of their candidates announced earlier ~ Nilkant Halarnkar and Yuri Alemao
