The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Tuesday held preliminary seat-sharing discussions for the Assembly polls, which are likely to be held in October.

Both the parties have decided to retain their sitting seats and discuss the sharing on the seats where party candidates stood second in the 2014 Assembly elections. The parties will also begin talks with the smaller allies from Wednesday.

The Congress had won 42 MLAs and the NCP had won 41 MLAs in last Assembly election after fighting the polls separately. A total of 48 Congress and 51 NCP candidates stood second in the last elections. The parties have decided to concentrate on these 182 seats to win maximum constituencies.

“It was a preliminary discussion between parties. The sharing of seats with other parties will be decided at the latter stage. No discussion has taken place so far on joining hands with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS),” said Congress state unit chief Balasaheb Thorat.

Leaders from both the parties agreed to discuss the remaining seats after the rounds of talks with the smaller parties including the Communist Party of India (CPI), Samajwadi Party, Raju Shetti-led Swabhimani Paksha, Hitendra Thakur-led Bahujan Vikas Aghadi and Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. The Congress-NCP has also decided to invite the VBA for discussion by writing a letter to Ambedkar with an appeal to join hands to avoid the division of the secular votes. The leaders, however, are not very hopeful about Ambedkar coming on board to join the alliance.

“We had left no stone unturned to convince Ambedkar during the Lok Sabha elections, but VBA was determined not to join hands with us,” said a Congress leader requesting anonymity. A group of the Congress-NCP leaders are also of the opinion that not all the votes polled by the VBA candidates in Lok Sabha elections were from their vote bank. State NCP chief Jayant Patil said that winnability of the particular seats will be the key parameter while sharing seats. “The number of seats to be shared between two parties will be decided after talking to smaller parties,” Patil said. Patil, however, said that they discussed over joining hands with MNS.

First Published: Jul 17, 2019 07:23 IST