Puducherry Elections 2021: Puducherry BJP in-charge Nirmal Kumar Surana today announced that the party has finalised its seat-sharing deal with the NR Congress and the AIADMK. Surana said that the alliance will contest polls under the leadership of NR Congress chief and former CM of the Union Territory N Rangaswamy. “NR Congress, BJP and AIADMK are going to contest the Puducherry elections together. NRC will be contesting on 16 seats while BJP and AIADMK will contest on 14 seats. We will fight elections in Puducherry under the leadership of N Rangaswamy,” said Surana addressing the media.
NR Congress had been demanding 18 seats out of the total 30 seats. However, it has now settled for 16 seats, leaving 14 for the BJP and the AIADMK.
Earlier, speculation was rife that N Rangaswamy-led NR Congress may go to polls solo as the leader was reportedly unhappy with Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Puducherry election rally remark in which he had claimed that the UT will have a BJP government and a new BJP CM after the April 6 polls. However, now he has been officially declared the Chief Ministerial candidate of the alliance. He had twice served as the CM of the UT, once as a Congress CM and once after he floated his own party.
Puducherry has a 30-member assembly while the Centre nominates 3 members taking the total tally to 33. The Union Territory has headed to polls after witnessing months of political turmoil which saw the collapse of V Narayansamy led Congress government. In February, five Congress MLAs and a DMK MLA had revolted against Narayansamy and had resigned reducing the government into a minority.
The elections in the union territory will be held on April 6 while the results will be declared on May 2. Opinion polls have predicted an NDA government in the union territory.