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Former BJP members on Congress list

AHMEDABAD: Despite grumblings within the party, the Congress has accommodated diverse forces in selecting candidates for the Gujarat Assembly elections in a bid to avoid division of anti-BJP vote.

The high command on Wednesday released the list of candidates for 82 of the 87 seats going to polls in the first phase on December 11. The Congress has left four seats — Upleta, Gondal (both in Rajkot district), Mahuva (Bhavnagar) and Umbergaon (Bulsar) — to the Nationalist Congress Party, and Bhavnagar North to the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The Congress has also given ticket to six persons who have resigned from the BJP as well as Assembly membership and joined the party. Party sources said that in a bid to make the anti-Modi platform broader, the Congress, in its list for 95 seats covered under the second phase, would give at least one each to Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Jan Shakti Party. Three or four more seats would be allotted to BJP dissidents and at least a couple of more to the NCP.

Though the party had to “sacrifice” some seats, Congress leaders are happy that the understanding among all anti-Modi forces, along with the blessings of the BJP dissident leader Keshubhai Patel, who has a large following among rural voters in the Saurashtra region, will bolster Congress prospects.

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