Congress to contest 37 seats in Bihar

NEW DELHI: With the UPA alliance in Bihar virtually collapsing, Congress on Saturday announced that it will contest 37 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats and leave only three for the RJD and LJP.

"We have decided to contest on 37 seats in Bihar. We want to leave three seats, two on which Lalu Prasad would contest and one on which Ram Vilas Paswan would contest," senior Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde told reporters here.

RJD and LJP had left only three seats for the Congress under the seat sharing agreement announced by them unilaterally.

Shinde, who is chairman of the screening committee on Bihar said he would be "sending a list of names (seats) to the Central Election Committee for approval".

The Congress leader claimed that the party workers were "very agitated and their dissatisfaction was at such a level that it getting difficult to convince them."