Mumbai/Akola: On Tuesday, Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar said that talks of alliance with Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections had ended with no conclusive results and that he would be announcing candidates from all 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state on March 15 (Friday). Ambedkar, who heads the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), yesterday declared that he would be contesting from Solapur, which is the same constituency from where Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shine is reportedly planning to fight the polls from.
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As per sources told that the Maharashtra Congress failed to stitch an alliance with the VBA as Ambedkar had demanded 23 seats, leaving only 25 seats for the Congress-NCP alliance. The number of seats demanded by the Dalit leader was termed as “unacceptable” by the Congress, sources said, adding that Ambedkar had also demanded that crucial seats such as Baramati, Yavatmal and Nanded be given to his candidates.
It is to be noted that Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi is in alliance with Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM in Maharashtra. Sources told that the NCP was initially not ready to have the AIMIM on board as alliance partner. However, the Congress had been trying for weeks to formalise an alliance with Ambedkar’s party, with the AIMIM also saying that it was willing to not field candidates and instead urged the Congress-NCP alliance to give seats to Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi.
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However, the machinations seem not to have borne the desired results for Congress, which was apparently hoping to consolidate the Dalit votebank with the alliance. Ambedkar and Owaisi are likely to announce candidates on Friday, either in Aurangabad or Hyderabad. In yet another setback to the Congress, Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, who is the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly, quit the party on Tuesday and joined the BJP.