The Hindu : BJD, BJP fail to reach accord on civic polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 25, 2003

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National

BJD, BJP fail to reach accord on civic polls

By Our Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR AUG. 24 . The Biju Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party today failed to finalise a formula to jointly contest the polls to all the 96 municipal bodies, including the municipal corporations of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, on September 19. This has come as a boon to the Opposition Congress. Though the party is facing infighting, it now stands a better chance to do well as there would be triangular contests in almost all the seats.

Earlier, the BJD and the BJP leaders had announced that they would jointly fight the polls to the civic bodies spread over 30 districts and had also finalised the seat-sharing formula for 40 or so seats. But today, the BJD-BJP coordination committee could not come up with a formula for seat-sharing in the municipal corporations of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack as well as other civic bodies. Both parties were firm on contesting in more number of seats to see their own men as Mayors in the two corporations. As the talks failed, it became clear that the earlier agreement might not be valid. However, the leaders claimed that they would stick to the agreement.

The contest in the remaining civic bodies and the two corporations would be "friendly" and both the parties would come together after the polls to form the executive committees wherever they got a combined majority over the Congress, the alliance leaders said. The two had failed to share the seats in a majority of districts in the gram panchayat polls nearly two years ago. As a result, the Congress had won in a large number of Panchayati Raj bodies.

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