Cong's Alliance Panel Briefs Leadership on Seat-sharing; Talks with INDIA Partners to Begin Soon

The Congress’ National Alliance Committee, which met party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday and apprised them about the feedback from state units on seat-sharing with other INDIA bloc parties for the Lok Sabha polls, asserted that state-wise talks with coalition partners will commence soon.

The committee, of which Mukul Wasnik is the convener and has former chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel as well as Mohan Prakash and Salman Khurshid in it, held final talks and suggested the way forward to the party leadership.

“Over the last few days, the committee held extensive deliberations with party leaders of various states on alliance with INDIA bloc parties. We have put before Kharge ji, Rahul ji and Venugopal ji, the details of the discussions,” Wasnik told reporters after the meeting at the Congress president’s residence.

“Now after this we are going to soon commence talks with alliance partners. We will look at the convenience and availability of various paries and then proceed further with discussions,” he added.

Wasnik said the party was aware that seat-sharing has to be done soon and it will give it top priority. There will be no delay in this, added Wasnik, who was flanked by Gehlot, Baghel, Prakash and Khurshid.

It is important that discussions are held state-wise because there is a unique situation in various states, Wasnik said. “There is already an alliance called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). We will be talking with parties that have influence in areas and keeping their influence in view, we will have our dialogue. Certainly this will be a state wise discussion and then we will move forward,” he added.

Asked about seat-sharing in Punjab and Delhi, Wasnik said that he was not in a position to talk about specific states and parties. “Our objective is to ensure that INDIA bloc forms government after the Lok Sabha polls,” he added.

Wasnik asserted that the party and leadership were giving priority to seat-sharing. The TMC has been pushing for an early settlement on seats to be contested for the Lok Sabha polls. It had kept December 31 as the deadline for seat-sharing talks, however, that could not fructify.

The opposition bloc parties are now keen to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement with the clock ticking for the Lok Sabha polls.