NCP plans to field 40-45 candidates in Karnataka elections
New Delhi (PTI): The Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is planning to contest 40-45 seats in the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections where the BJP, Congress and the JD(S) are locked in a triangular contest.
Pawar has summoned a meeting of party leaders in Mumbai on Saturday to finalise its plans for the assembly elections in Karnataka scheduled for May 10.
"We are meeting in Mumbai tomorrow to finalise our plans for the Karnataka elections," Pawar said here.
The move is also seen as an attempt by the NCP to regain the national party status it had to forego due to its depleted political fortunes in states such as Goa, Meghalaya and Manipur.
The NCP had written to the Election Commission for allocation of the alarm clock' symbol for the Karnataka Assembly elections, a request that was acceded to by the poll authority.
NCP leaders said that the party was planning to put up candidates on at least 40-45 of the total 224 seats, across the state and extend support to the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti in the Maharashtra-Karnataka boundary region which is home to a sizeable Marathi-speaking population.
Pawar's announcement of plans for Karnataka came a day after his meeting with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi on the need to forge opposition unity to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections next year.
The Congress has pinned its hopes of a big victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls as it yearns for a reversal of its sliding electoral performance since the loss in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Voting in the state will take place on May 10 and counting is scheduled for May 13.
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Sharad Pawar praised RSS after seeing how it burst fake narrative balloon of LS polls: Fadnavis
Nagpur, Jan 10: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar praised the RSS after realising how the outfit managed to overcome the fake narrative spread by the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The opposition had claimed BJP wanted to win 400 seats to change the Constitution and end reservations, a narrative which BJP leaders later claimed hit the party hard.
On Pawar praising the RSS recently, the CM said the MVA was successful in creating a fake narrative during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
"When assembly polls were approaching, many people from diverse fields who are inspired by the RSS played their role and burst the balloon of this fake narrative. Sharad Pawar saheb is very intelligent. He would have certainly studied this aspect. He realised that this (RSS) is not a regular political power but a nationalist power. In any competition it is good to praise others," he added.
That is why Pawar may have praised the RSS, Fadnavis said.
Speaking at an interaction with senior editor Vivek Ghalsasi at Late Vilasji Fadnis Jivhala programme here, Fadnavis also said he had asked for organisational work when Eknath Shinde was made chief minister in June 2022, but senior leaders asked him to join the government.
He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him not to behave like an extra-constitutional authority in the government.
He said the decision to become deputy chief minister on the command of the party leadership earned him a lot of praise from the cadre.
After the massive mandate the ruling alliance received in the 2024 assembly polls, Fadnavis said people and party workers would not have been happy if the CM was not from the BJP.
Shinde himself agreed within minutes that the CM must be from the BJP, which itself got 132 seats and was close to a majority of its own in the 288-member assembly, he added.
On Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray meeting him during the winter sessions of the legislature in Nagpur, Fadnavis said he had announced he would not indulge in politics of revenge after becoming CM and all leaders responded positively to it.
On chances of the NCP (SP) and NCP coming closer or reuniting, Fadnavis said, "If you see the developments that took place from 2019 to 2024, I realised never say never and anything can happen. Uddhav Thackeray goes to some other party and Ajit Pawar comes to us. In politics anything can happen though I am not saying this should happen."
He praised BJP leader Arun Gujarati from whom he learnt patience, which he claimed was an important quality in politics along with the ability to take criticism.
In a lighter vein, he said, "I only get angry when I am hungry. If you see me angry then give me something to eat and my anger will go away."
