Ajit Pawar-led NCP preparing to contest 25 seats in Delhi assembly polls

MUMBAI: Keen to get the status of ‘national party’ back, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP will contest the Delhi assembly elections, scheduled to be held in February. The party is planning to contest 25 seats, of which candidates for 11 have already been declared.

Following the split in the party last year, NCP is looking to regain its national party status, for which it has been contesting elections outside Maharashtra, but failing miserably to register any success, except in Arunachal Pradesh. It had contested Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand assembly elections on 35 and 25 seats respectively but could not get even one seat. In Arunachal, however, it won three out of the 14 seats it contested.

In Delhi, the party is planning to contest 25 seats, said the party’s national spokesperson, Brijmohan Shrivastava. “We wanted to contest the Delhi polls as a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) front, but BJP thinks otherwise. Hence, the party has started preparation to fight the polls alone,” he said.

The party has already declared candidates for Burari, Badli, Mangol Puri, Chandni Chowk, Balli maran, Chhatarpur, Sangam Vihar, Okhla, Laxmi Nagar, Seema Puri and Gokal Puri.

In a major setback, the Election Commission (EC) on April 11, 2023, withdrew the national party status of the NCP on the grounds that it no longer fulfilled the eligibility criteria. The EC also revoked its state party status in three states - Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya - which paved the way to remove the national party status.

The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, mandates that for national party status, a political party needs to fulfill any of the following three conditions: First, it should secure at least six percent of the votes polled in four or more states in the Lok Sabha or assembly elections, and should also have at least four members in the Lok Sabha. Secondly, it needs to have at least two percent of the total Lok Sabha seats and candidates from not less than three states. Third, it should be recognised as a state party in at least four states.