Cong, NCP alliance breaks in Gujarat

In a major setback to Congress in Gujarat ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, NCP today announced candidates for eight seats, indicating that the tie-up between the two parties in the state has broken.

Blaming the Congress for the break-up, state NCP president Jayant Patel said, "I have declared eight candidates for the Lok Sabha seats...Congress have behaved in an arbitrary way. It has declared candidates for 25 out of 26 seats in their own way and said that they have kept Surat for us."

"We had demanded two seats of Rajkot and Ahmedabad (West). Now we will fight almost on all the 26 seats," Patel told PTI.

The Congress and the NCP had fought in an alliance to stop the division of secular votes in the state in 2004 Lok Sabha elections and 2007 state assembly polls.

In 2002 state assembly elections when Congress and NCP had fought separately, the results were affected with almost 15 seats going in favour of BJP due to split in secular votes, the NCP leader said.

Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhvadia said, "This is an unfortunate development as we are alliance partner at national level. But, I don't think that it will affect poll results in any way."

The BJP poll managers are happy with the development as they are going to gain in the state, sources in the party said.

In 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Congress had given Rajkot seat to NCP which the party lost to BJP. While in 2007 assembly polls, NCP, which had fought in alliance with the Congress, won three out of the eleven seats given to it.

NCP's sitting MLA from Gondal Chandubhai Vaghasia and senior party leader Bholabhai Patel will contest Rajkot and Ahmedabad (East) constituencies respectively.

The party has given Surendranagar ticket to daughter of Congress MLA Babu Meghji Shah, Jagruti while on Dahod seat they have fielded Kalsinh Meda.

On the Bharuch seat Iqubal Afinwala will be contesting while former Congress minister in state government Madhubhai Bhuva will fight from Amreli seat.

Mangal Gandhi will contest Gandhinagar seat against L K Advani, while Yogesh Naik will fight from Navsari seat.

"I will be contesting from Anand seat. We will soon declare names of candidates for other seats," Patel said.