The Congress flag.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: With an hour left for filing nominations, Congress on Thursday left one seat for CPI(M) in Haryana Assembly elections after its negotiations for an alliance with AAP and CPI crashed. Congress will fight 89 out of 90 seats.
The announcement of leaving Bhiwani seat, where the Left party and its farmers’ wing have a strong base, and choosing a candidate for Sohna seat came at 2:05 PM, 55 minutes before the close of filing nominations.
Since 11:30 PM on Wednesday, Congress has announced candidates for 48 seats – 40 names on Wednesday, five at 2:05 AM on Thursday, two at 10:42 AM and one at 2:05 PM.
The delay in announcement came as the Congress was holding negotiations with the CPI, which had reservations over the seat allocated by the Congress for them. As the negotiations did not make any headway, Congress went ahead naming a candidate for Sohna while leaving Bhiwani to CPI(M).
Sources said Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal had conveyed to the CPI General Secretary D Raja that his party was willing to concede one seat to the Left party following which the latter sent a list of five seats, including Rania and Sonepat, to the Congress to allocate one.
However, sources said the Congress was not willing to concede any seat suggested by the CPI, which upset the calculations. CPI has filed nominations in five seas and hopes to negotiate a settlement before the withdrawal of nominations on September 16.
CPI sources said the Congress should have been magnanimous and understood that the presence of the Left party in its coalition would have added more electoral muscle to it in the fight against the ruling BJP.
At the same time, CPI(M) managed to get Bhiwani seat for its candidate Om Prakash. Sources said Bhiwani has been a stronghold for the party and its activists from the district were active in farmers’ protests. Leaders believe that Congress move would help in attracting CPI(M) votes in other areas to the party.
Earlier, sources had said that CPI(M) leadership had approached Haryana Congress top leader Bhupinder Hooda for exploring an alliance but he had put the ball in Congress High Command’s court.
The alliance talk gathered some steam only after top leader Rahul Gandhi suggested that Congress should look at forging alliances with I.N.D.I.A. partners in states. He wanted the national level experiment to be spread to states but Haryana Congress leaders were not keen to give space to AAP.
Negotiations with AAP broke down late last week after Congress refused to part with more than five seats when the Arvind Kejriwal-led party was demanding ten seats. AAP has announced candidates for all seats.
Earlier, Congress had indicated that it was willing to give Samajwadi Party also a seat but the latter did not insist on getting a seat.