TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will get six seats to contest in the March 3 Assembly polls.
According to highly placed sources in both Congress and NCP, the deal has been worked out and the final announcement will be made in a couple of days.
“The Congress has agreed to give six seats – Mapusa, Tivim, Vasco, Saligao, Sanguem and Porvorim – to NCP as part of the deal for the March 3 Assembly polls,” sources told Herald from Delhi.
It is also learnt that NCP had staked its claim for Mandrem and Benaulim seat, which has been turned down by the Congress and the same has been conveyed to them.
Nonetheless, sources say, NCP has agreed to the proposal in principle and has even zeroed in on its candidates for each of these six constituencies.
Sitting MLAs Jose Philip D’Souza and Nilkanth Halarnkar will retain their Vasco and Tivim constituencies respectively while Suresh Parulekar will contest from Saligao, State NCP President Surendra Sirsat from Mapusa and Yuri Alemao from Sanguem.
“The decision on who will contest from Porvorim is still awaited as there are many claimants for the seat,” sources added.
Sources further said that the delay in announcement has been due to the non-availability of top leaders Oscar Fernandes, who is the chairman of Congress Screening Committee and NCP’s Praful Patel, who is learnt to have gone abroad.
The State NCP had initially demanded 12 seats, which later contended for 8 seats but the Congress remained adamant on its stand of allotting only 6 seats to the former.
The delay in the alliance deal has also delayed in finalising the Congress candidates for the polls.
Meanwhile, the final call on who will form the Congress candidates’ line up for Elections 2012 has been postponed by a week and will now be held on January 28. The Congress is mainly waiting for BJP to announce its next move.
It is also learnt that the Congress High Command has asked all the ticket aspirants who are in
Oscar Fernandes heads the five-member Central Screening Committee for selection of party candidates which also includes Congress Working Committee’s Permanent Invitees Jagmit Singh Brar, in-charge of Goa desk in AICC besides Shivajirao Deshmukh, a senior
