NCP declares eight candidates in Gujarat

Ahmedabad, Apr 4 (ANI): The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Saturday announced the names of eight candidates in Gujarat for general elections.

The party's decision indicated that its tie-up with the Congress in the State has broken.

NCP Gujarat president Jayant Patel blamed the Congress for the break-up.

"I have declared eight candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat. The Congress has behaved in an arbitrary way. It has declared candidates for 25 out of 26 seats in its own way and said that they have kept the Surat parliamentary constituency 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 NCP leader informed that the results were affected in 2002 State Assembly elections after Congress and the NCP decided to fight separately in the state.

"In 2002 State Assembly elections, when Congress and the NCP had fought separately, the results were affected with almost 15 seats going in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party due to split in secular votes," he added.

Meanwhile, Congress Spokesperson Arjun Modhvadia said that the decision to fight separately would not affect the poll results any way.

"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," he added. (ANI)