PM Modi holds meet with BJP Election Committee to finalise candidates

Prime Narendra Modi held a Central Election Committee meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the party headquarters in New Delhi. The meeting was to finalize the candidates for the upcoming State elections in Maharashtra and Haryana. The meeting was headed by the trio of PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and J P Nadda, the Working President of the BJP.

The Election Commission recently announced that the elections in the two states will take place on Monday, October 21 with the counting to take place on Thursday, October 24.

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Alliance announcement soon

The BJP meeting went on for a long time in the evening, with the final list of candidates to be announced at the end. However, the leaders of the party left the headquarters in the evening without any announcement. The announcement of the first list is likely to be made on Monday, with the alliance to be announced at a later date in Mumbai. The last date to file the nominations to the Election Commission is Friday, October 4. 

The BJP is likely to announce an alliance with Shiv Sena, with whom they are currently negotiating the seat-sharing numbers and important portfolios. The BJP won 122 seats of the 228 seat assembly in the 2014 Maharashtra elections, becoming the largest party. The BJP and Shiv Sena ended their alliance before the polls, but later after a poor performance in the polls, the Shiv Sena offered a post-poll alliance, which was later finalized. Last week, Amit Shah cancelled his visit to Mumbai after the talks with Shiv Sena had failed to finalize. 

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INC-NCP opposition

The India National Congress (INC) will be contesting the polls with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), with whom they had broken the alliance in the run-up to the 2014 State Assembly. Both the parties failed to perform well in the elections, winning 42 seats and 41 seats respectively. However, the alliance was confirmed a few weeks ago by NCP Chief Sharad Pawar. The alliance will be contesting 125 seats each, with the remaining seats to be contested by the smaller parties. 

READ | Maharashtra Elections: Alliance between NCP and INC confirmed by Pawar

The INC released the first list of candidates who will be contesting the polls on Sunday. The list had 51 candidates which included former CM Ashok Chavan, who will be contesting from Bhokar assembly constituency. NCP released a list of 5 candidates on September 18. 

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