Humiliated by Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party(NCP) on Saturday announced a decision to contest all 26 seats in Gujarat. NCP declared candidates for eight seats in Gujarat on Saturday itself. These candidates will file nominations on Tuesday. More candidates would be announced in second list.

This clearly indicats that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, tie-up between the two parties in Gujarat has broken.

Gujarat NCP president Jayant Patel said, “I have declared eight candidates for the Lok Sabha seats.Congress have behaved in an arbitrary way. It has declared candidates for 25 out of 26 seats in their own way and said that they have kept Surat for us. We had demanded two seats of Rajkot and Ahmedabad (West). Now we will fight almost on all the 26 seats,” Patel said.

The Congress and the NCP had fought in an alliance to stop the division of non-BJP votes in the state in 2004 Lok Sabha elections and 2007 state assembly polls.

In 2002 state assembly elections when Congress and NCP had fought separately, the results were affected with almost 15 seats going in favour of BJP due to split in secular votes, the NCP leader said.

Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhvadia said, “This is an unfortunate development as we are alliance partner at national level. But, I don’t think that it will affect poll results in any way.”

NCP candidates declared today

Rajkot – Chandubhai Vaghasia
Ahmedabad(East) – Bholabhai Patel
Surendranagar – Jagrutiben Babubhai Shah
Dahod – Kalarambhai Neda
Bharuch – Iqbalbhai Afinwala
Amreli – Madhubhai Bhuva
Gandhinagar – Mangaldanbhai Gadhvi
Navsari – Yogeshbhai Nayak