Jammu, Jan 3: Amidst speculations that Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir may be held along with Lok Sabha polls or even prior to that, Congress and National Conference are learnt to have outlined strategy for a pre-poll alliance between the two parties.
According to the reliable sources in political circles, top leadership of NC and Congress have almost stitched an informal pre-poll alliance for the Assembly polls under which both the parties have agreed to leave ten seats for each other in Jammu and Kashmir divisions.
However, for the Lok Sabha polls, both the parties will openly support each other and contest elections under pre-poll alliance. While elaborating, sources explained that Congress will either leave ten seats for NC in Jammu division or field dummy candidates on these segments, which include Bishnah, Nagrota, Bani, Darhal, Vijaypur, Marh, Kalakot, Kishtwar, Poonch and Kargil.
Similarly, sources added, NC will either leave ten seats for Congress in Kashmir Valley or field dummy candidates. In the Lok Sabha polls, sources said that NC will field candidates on all the three seats in Kashmir Valley and Congress on Jammu-Poonch, Udhampur-Kathua-Doda and Ladakh seats.
An outline for the alliance was drawn after a meeting of Farooq Abdullah with Ghulam Nabi Azad and other senior Congress leaders at New Delhi, last week. It was followed by an internal meeting of Congress leaders, including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni, PCC president G A Mir and both the AICC secretary incharge for J&K, Shabir Ahmed and Sudhir Sharma, sources disclosed.
