NCP to play spoilsport again on three Lok Sabha, two assembly seats

GANDHINAGAR: Like during the 2017

Gujarat

assembly election, the Nationalist Congress Party will likely hurt the Congress’s fortunes in 2019. The Sharad Pawar-led party has fielded candidates on three

Lok Sabha

seats and

two assembly seats

where byelections are being held. Three-cornered fights with a division of the anti-BJP vote is likely to favour the BJP.

A bigger worry for the Congress is the seats the NCP has chosen to field candidates on. The Lok Sabha seats of Patan, Surendranagar and Panchmahal, where the NCP has fielded candidates, are those where the Congress is expected to put up a decent fight. The BJP has not renominated its MPs in all these three seats.

Similarly, the NCP has candidates in the fray in two assembly byelections, for Unjha and Manavadar, which are also likely to be closely contested. The BJP has fielded Congress turncoats Asha Patel and Jawahar Chavda on these seats. Both Chavda and Patel are facing considerable opposition from within the BJP, which favours the Congress. With NCP pitching in with its own candidates, the Congress’s position is weakened in these contests.

Jayant Patel, the Gujarat president of the NCP, said that NCP candidates would affect both the BJP and Congress candidates.

“How can one say that the NCP will only damage the Congress?” Patel asked. “The NCP had offered to stitch up an alliance with the Congress before the elections, but the Congress displayed arrogance by not offering to have an alliance,” he added.