Nov 17 (Mumbai Mirror): Taking cue from the resounding victory of the anti-BJP Grand Alliance in Bihar, Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Monday said it has proposed to contest the biennial legislative council and upcoming local bodies polls in Maharashtra in alliance with the Congress.
The Congress-NCP alliance broke up during the Assembly polls last year with the two deciding to contest separately.
State NCP president Sunil Tatkare said that as directed by Pawar, the state leaders had already held preliminary round of talks with the Congress on tying up for the legislative council polls from eight local bodies, scheduled for next month.
There will be eight vacancies in the legislative council with as many members elected from the local self government bodies retiring on January 1, 2016.
Of them, four are from Congress, such as Amrish Patel (Dhule-Nandurbar), Mahadev Mahadik (Kolhapur), Rajendra Mulak (Nagpur), Bhai Jagtap (BMC), two from Shiv Sena (Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam and Gopikishan Bajoria (Akola-Washim-Buldhana), one from NCP (Deepak Salunke, Solapur) and the other, an independent, Arun Jagtap (Ahmednagar), who is an NCP supporter.
Tatkare said that NCP has proposed that the party along with Congress can retain the 4:2 formula, but demanded the Akola-Washim-Buldhana seat, which the NCP lost to Shiv Sena last time by a narrow margin.
"The quota for Mumbai is 75 and Shiv Sena has the required numbers to get Ramdas Kadam elected in the first round from Mumbai. We are waiting for the Congress response regarding our alliance proposal," he added.
Tatkare said during the next one year, biennial elections are scheduled for 30 LC seats from local bodies, teachers and MLAs constituencies. "There will be 10 vacancies from the MLAs quota. If Congress-NCP have an alliance, we can get three out of the 10 seats," he said.
Besides, 186 municipal council polls across the state are scheduled in November 2016, followed by municipal corporation elections in 10 major cities, including Mumbai and 27 Zilla Parishads, in early 2017, according to him.