Cong making last ditch efforts for pre-poll tie up with JVM

New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Congress party Monday made last
ditch efforts to reach out to Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM),
led by former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi for a pre-poll
alliance in India's eastern state where assembly elections in
five phases begins November 25.
Party sources indicated that if the talks do not
fructify with JVM by Tuesday, it will go alone like it did in
northern state of Uttar Pradesh. It would come out with the
first list of candidates by Tuesday itself.
A meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC),
chaired by party President Sonia Gandhi and attended by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, who is a member of the CEC, was held
at the residence of Gandhi in which the names of the party
candidates were discussed and finalised.
Emerging from the meeting, All India Congress
Committee (AICC) in-charge of the state, K Keshav Rao told
reporters, "as of now, standing before you, we are alone," he
said in the afternoon, adding the first list of party
candidates is likely to be declared Tuesday.
Rao said the CEC went into details of the candidates
and would have another sitting before announcing the names.
Highly placed party sources, however, indicated that
the names of the candidates have been finalised but not
announced as talks with the JVM have not "entirely failed".
"Talks are still going on," said a senior party
leader, closely associated with the developments in the
poll-bound state. (More) PTI