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National Conference president Farooq Abdullah said on Thursday that a pre-poll alliance with the Congress party is final on all 90 Jammu and Kashmir assembly seats. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is also expected to join this alliance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Abdullah\u2019s comments came after he and his son, Omar Abdullah, met with Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi in Srinagar. Earlier in the day, Gandhi, while addressing party workers in Srinagar, said that an alliance would be formed while maintaining the \u2018respect of Congress workers.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The three-phase assembly polls <\/a>in Jammu and Kashmir are scheduled to begin with the first round for 24 seats on September 18. The other two rounds are scheduled for September 25 and October 1. The votes will be counted on October 4.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Farooq Abdullah said on Thursday that the alliance will be finalised by evening. Yet, a seat-sharing formula between the two parties has not been announced formally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As things stand, the two parties are working out some hurdles before finalising any formula. The NC has a strong presence in Kashmir Valley, while the Congress is a bigger player in Jammu where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also a major player.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to reports, the Congress party wants seats from Kashmir Valley, from where it has fielded candidates in past elections. The National Conference, on its part, is unwilling to concede some of these seats since it thinks it has been working on the ground for a long on these seats, the reports said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ever since the first assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir in 1951, the National Conference <\/a>(NC) and the Congress were the dominant parties in the erstwhile state until 2002 when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as a major political player for the first time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHurdles in way of seat-sharing pact<\/h2>\n
INDIA bloc partners<\/h2>\n