PANAJI : The failure to reach a consensus on seat sharing with the Congress has opened the doors for the Nationalist Congress Party to partner with the Goa Forward Party and contest the forthcoming state assembly elections.
The NCP as well as the GFP have decided to field candidates regardless of Congress’ announcement on the alliance formation. The NCP has finalised 20 candidates for nomination while the GFP has decided that four of its candidates will file their nomination papers on Monday, January 16.
NCP state president Jose Philip D’Souza said that while he still hopes that the alliance talks will go through and formation of the mahagathbandhan will be announced during the weekend, his party has decided to prepare to contest the polls in maximum seats.
Stating that the wait for the Congress’ announcement led to two of the NCP’s winnable candidates resigning from the party, D’Souza said, “The Congress has not taken any decision as yet and we cannot just keep waiting. We are preparing now to contest maximum seats and will form alliance with the Goa Forward and the UGP. On Monday, our candidates will file nominations.”
The GFP has not ruled out formation of an alliance with the NCP and the UGP.
GFP president Prabhakar Timble said the party is not averse to forging new alliances.
He said, “In elections, anything cannot be ruled out during the last minute. But I wouldn’t want to comment on that. We have always said that we wanted an alliance with the Congress and we stand by that. However, on January 16 our four candidates will file their nominations.”
Stating that the demands of the GFP were based on winnability of the candidates, Timble said, “Whatever the constituencies we are asking for are the constituencies which we have ploughed, cultivated, sown the seeds and given our sweat. We are not asking for constituencies sitting in an office. We have not asked any place where we have not put our sweat. We can give the alliance five MLAs.”
