The Congress’ decision to leave 14 seats — the ones where it came second in the 2007 BMC general elections — to the NCP has left several party aspirants fuming.
In the seat-sharing formula finalised last week, the Congress decided to contest 169 seats, while it left the NCP 58 seats. Fourteen of these seats are from the areas where Congress candidates had stood second in the last elections. Most of then are from western suburbs, where already a discontent is brewing among party candidates for various reasons. According to some disgruntled Congress sources, some of the wards that are being given to the NCP in the western suburbs are those which the Congress could have won by putting in some extra effort. However, by giving them to the NCP, which has no base there, the party has already gifted these seats to the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance.
A Congress activist, who was eyeing candidacy from one of these wards, said on condition of anonymity, “I had been preparing for elections for five years, confident that the Congress would win. But now, all my efforts have come to nothing as we have allotted these wards to the NCP, which has no strength.”