NEW DELHI: The Congress will remain the senior partner in Maharashtra as per the seat-sharing arrangement that has been reached after some hard bargaining with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
While the Congress has been allotted 26 seats with the proviso that it accommodate the smaller allies from this quota, the NCP will contest the remaining 22 Lok Sabha constituencies.
Should the Samajwadi Party — which has been lobbying for a seat in Maharashtra — insist on being accommodated, that will have to be from the NCP quota as the Congress is in no mood to concede ground.
The NCP, too, is learnt to have more or less decided against giving any seat to the Samajwadi Party after having to settle for 22 seats despite pressing for being the senior partner of the alliance on the premise that it was in a stronger position in the State.
Though the Congress will lead the alliance, the number of seats it will contest has come down since the 2004 elections — it fielded candidates in 27 constituencies while the NCP could do so only in 18 as it had to accommodate its three allies from the party quota of 21 seats. Now this burden is on the Congress and, so, it is trying to convince Ramdas Athawale (Republican Party of India-A) to contest on the party symbol.
Besides the number of seats that each party would contest, another bone of contention has been where either party would field candidates in the wake of the changed contours of constituencies following the delimitation exercise.
A particularly ticklish issue has been identifying a constituency for the NCP in Mumbai, which is spread across six constituencies.
