NCP to announce RS candidates by March 13

Mumbai, Mar 9 (UNI) The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will announce the names of two candidates for the biennial elections to Rajya Sabha by March 13 after the parliamentary board meeting, party spokesman Ratnakar Mahajan said.

Talking to reporters here yesterday, Dr Mahajan refused to divulge the names. He said the party is in a position to win two seats.

However, party sources confirmed that Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Mr Vasant Chavan are likely to be renominated for the second term.

To a question, Dr Mahajan refused to comment on the challenge thrown by senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde to identify the BJP legislators who are in touch with NCP.

He said the resignation process of MLAs might have stopped due to the defeat of Congress candidate in Srivardhan by-election.

So far, six Shiv Sena legislators quit their seats in the Assembly and of them, five got re-elected on the Congress ticket.

Condemning the Varanasi blast of yesterday, which claimed at least 12 lives, Dr Mahajan also criticised the BJP and VHP's attempts to gain political mileage from the incident by organising bandhs.

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