The Congress, on a roll after sealing seat sharing deals with Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, is aiming for a hat-trick, with a new formula for Mamata Banerjee. Sources said the party is hoping to get five of Bengal’s 42 seats. The downside – as in deals with AAP and SP — the Congress may have to part with seats in states where it is the main Opposition. This could involve two seats in Assam and one in Meghalaya.

But for now, the good news is the talks are back on, and moving in a positive direction, sources in the Congress said. “If consensus is reached, an announcement will be made soon,” they added.

The party, though, is still pushing for one more seat in Bengal – which is four more than Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s last offer.

For the Congress, this is a big scaling down. The party had started with eight to 14 seats and then slowly lowered the figure. But it was its insistence on six seats that had provoked the fiery Chief Minister, who in no uncertain terms, told the Congress not to over-reach.

“I told Congress ‘You don’t have a single MLA here, I am offering two MP seats and we will ensure you win in those two seats.’ They said ‘No, we want more seats’. I said, ‘Now I’m not going to give a single seat’,” Ms. Banerjee had said at a meeting in Malda earlier this month.

Then, for good measure, she added that she was putting her membership of the INDIA bloc on hold and would review the matter after the election, depending on the result.

Sources said the Congress is hoping to settle for the seats the BJP currently holds – one of them in BJP bastion north Bengal. This are apart from the ones Mamata Banerjee had offered – Berhampore and Malda South that it won in 2019.

Seats that Congress wishes to fight and Trinamool might give them are Behrampur, Malda South, Malda North, Raiganj and Darjeeling. The Congress also wants Purulia but seems unlikely.

Party sources indicated that Trinamool does not realistically expect to win back the north Bengal seats, despite their public posturing.

Over the last few days, the Congress has been rapidly finalizing the deals that had been on ice, with the intervention of its Central leadership.

Reaching out personally to Akhilesh Yadav, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has accepted the SP’s 17-seat offer in Uttar Pradesh. And today, following a meeting at Rahul Gandhi’s residence, attended by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and others, sources said the broad contours of seat sharing with AAP have been decided.

In Delhi, where AAP is in power, it will contest four seats and the Congress three. In return, the Congress will cede two seats in Gujarat and one seat in Haryana to AAP. In both states, the Congress is the main Opposition party. In Goa, AAP will give one seat to the Congress.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLA Lasya Nandita died today in a tragic road accident in Hyderabad. The 37-year-old, who was a first-time MLA, suffered serious injuries after her vehicle lost control and collided with the road divider.

Lasya Nandita was rushed to the hospital immediately after the accident, and later died at the hospital. The driver involved in the crash is reported to be critically injured and is currently receiving medical treatment.

Just ten days ago, Lasya had survived another accident in Narkatpally where she sustained minor injuries. On February 13, while she was on her way to Nalgonda to attend a rally by the Chief Minister, an accident occurred, resulting in the death of her home guard.

Lasya Nandita, a prominent figure in the political landscape, had previously served as a corporator from Kavadiguda since 2016.

Born in 1986 in Hyderabad, Lasya Nandita made her foray into politics around a decade ago. She served as a corporator in the Kavadiguda ward before being elected as MLA from Secunderabad Cantonment in the 2023 Telangana assembly elections.

Senior BRS leader KT Rama Rao took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his condolences at Nandita’s sudden death. The driver involved in the crash is reported to be critically injured and is currently receiving medical treatment.

After her father’s death last year, Lasya was entrusted with the responsibility of carrying forward his legacy. In the November 2023 elections, she secured a victory after being nominated as the party’s candidate.

As the Congress labours through intense seat negotiations with INDIA bloc allies ahead of the national election, Rahul Gandhi dialled Uddhav Thackeray yesterday to discuss the deadlock over eight of Maharashtra’s 48 seats.

Rahul Gandhi, who is in the middle of a Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, reportedly spoke to the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader for an hour.

The Congress, say sources, want to contest three of Mumbai’s six Lok Sabha seats – Mumbai South Central, Mumbai North Central and Mumbai North West. Uddhav Thackeray reportedly wants to contest 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state, including four in Mumbai – Mumbai South, Mumbai North West, Mumbai North East and Mumbai South Central.

For the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance of Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, Sharad Pawar’s NCP and the Congress, the seat talks are entirely uncharted territory as the parties formed the ideologically mismatched alliance after the last Lok Sabha election in 2019. The three have managed an agreement on nearly 40 seats but negotiators are stuck on eight seats.

The undivided Shiv Sena fought 22 of 48 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and won 18, including three in Mumbai.

Uddhav Thackeray’s party ended its 25-year alliance with the BJP months later, after failing to agree on power-sharing terms following the Maharashtra state polls.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi government collapsed after the Shiv Sena split and Eknath Shinde’s faction formed a new government with the BJP.

Earlier this year, Sharad Pawar’s NCP suffered a similar rupture, with the veteran’s nephew Ajit Pawar joining the Eknath Shinde-BJP coalition government.

The Congress fears a similar exodus after two of its prominent leaders in Maharashtra, former chief minister Ashok Chavan, and Milind Deora, crossed over to the BJP.

The defections have complicated the seat negotiations for the Maharashtra opposition allies.

Sources say Uddhav Thackeray’s party, after the Congress defections, wants a greater share in Mumbai seats.

However, sources assert that Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge are all determined to make it work, aware that for each party, it is a battle for survival.

The Congress recently sealed difficult seat sharing deals with Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.

The party has also redoubled efforts to close a deal with Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has refused to part with more than five of her state’s 42 seats.