HYDERABAD: Congress party’s Central Election Committee has almost cleared the list of candidates barring 15 constituencies, which it intends to contest after seat sharing with the CPI.
On Tuesday, the Central leadership was engrossed in a meeting with the TPCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah, working president N.Uttam Kumar Reddy and former deputy chief minister C.Damodar Raj Narasimha to fine tune the list.
The AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, who held consultations with the TPCC leaders later visited the CPI headquarters in Delhi to meet the top leaders. It is understood that he met CPI’s D.Raja and discussed the seat sharing exercise, they had done so far. Sources said the Congress leaders explained that it was willing to give one Lok Sabha and eight Assembly seats as against two and 11 seats demanded by the CPI.
A TPCC leader said while there was near unanimity on majority of the seats, only a few contentious seats were kept pending as the demand was heavy. In such constituencies there were two names for each seat. This was making the task difficult and the party leadership was confident of finalising the names by April 4.
As regards the alliance, the Congress is all set to give Khammam Lok Sabha seat to the CPI and agreed in principle to concede Bellampally, Munugode, Wyra, Kothagudem, Pinapaka, Devarakonda and Station Ghanpur. There was stalemate on the Husnabad seat, which the CPI was insisting. Congress was willing to give other seats but the CPI leadership maintained that if Husnabad was conceded they would scale down their demand from 11 to nine.
