INDIA alliance joins CPI to contest 1 Lok Sabha, 8 Assembly seats in Andhra

INDIA alliance partners Congress and CPI in Andhra Pradesh have struck a seat sharing deal for the ensuing simultaneous polls, entailing the CPI to contest one Lok Sabha and eight Assembly seats.

As per the agreement reached on Thursday, CPI will contest the Guntur Lok Sabha constituency, while the Assembly segments include Vijayawada West, Visakhapatnam West, Anantapur and Pattikonda.

Other Assembly constituencies allocated to the CPI are Tirupati, Rajampet, Eluru and Kamalapuram.

Congress party will leave one Parliament constituency, namely Guntur to the CPI to contest. Congress party will leave the following eight Assembly constituencies to CPI to contest, the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) said in a press release on Thursday night.

YS Sharmila Reddy, president, APCC, held a series of consultations with Ramakrishna, secretary, CPI, on sharing of seats between Indian National Congress and CPI for the upcoming elections to Parliament and Assembly in Andhra Pradesh, it said.

However, the names of the CPI candidates were not revealed in the press release.

On April 2, Sharmila had announced the names of candidates for five Lok Sabha and 114 Assembly seats from the Congress party.

With the announcement of the seat sharing deal between the Congress and CPI, clarity on the INDIA alliance candidates has emerged for six Lok Sabha and 122 Assembly seats in the southern state.

Further details on another 19 Lok Sabha and 53 Assembly seats are awaited.

The Communist Party of India (CPI), Congress and CPI (M) are INDIA alliance partners in Andhra Pradesh.

Elections for the 175-member Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh are scheduled on May 13 and the counting of votes is slated for June 4.