Congress, NCP likely to swap 4 LS seats

Mumbai: The swapping of seats in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections is imminent with the Congress-NCP alliance this time. In the Lok Sabha, four seats are likely to be swapped by the parties. Sources also indicated that the parties will go with the formula popularly known as “seating-getting” to tackle the direct battle between them. There are 11 such Assembly seats according to the 2014 election results.

The Congress and NCP have started alliance discussions for the upcoming elections. The Congress has given this responsibility to its senior leader Ashok Gehlot and state chief Ashok Chavan whereas NCP has asked Prafull Patel and state chief Jayant Patil to spearhead the talks.

While there have been no concrete results so far, it is believed that both sides have come to an understanding on some of the issues, including the need to swap seats.

Among Lok Sabha seats, Congress is desperately targeting two seats belonging to the NCP i.e. Buldhana from Vidarbha and south Ahmednagar from northern Maharashtra. Buzz is that Leader of the Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil’s son Sujay wants to contest the south Ahmednagar seat whereas the Congress president’s close confidante and MLA Harshwardhan Sapkal wants to contest the Buldhana seat.

Meanwhile, the NCP is looking to contest the Akola and Pune seats.