New Delhi, Oct 21 (PTI) The Congress' Central Election Committee met here on Monday to finalise candidates for the upcoming Jharkhand Assembly polls.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary (in-charge, Organisation) K C Venugopal, Jharkhand Congress chief Keshav Mahto Kamlesh and AICC in-charge of state Ghulam Ahmad Mir, among others, attended the meeting at the party headquarters.

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The meeting comes two days after Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren said the INDIA bloc partners will contest the upcoming Assembly polls together and the Congress and the JMM will field candidates in 70 of the 81 seats.

Seat-sharing talks are on with alliance partners -- the RJD and the Left parties -- for the remaining 11 seats, he had said.

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The Assembly polls will be held in two phases on November 13 and 20. The votes will be counted on November 23.

"The INDIA bloc will contest the Jharkhand Assembly polls together. It has been decided during the seat-sharing talks with the allies that the Congress and the JMM will field candidates in 70 of the 81 seats," Soren had said after meeting with the alliance partners here.

He had said the decision was taken after consultations with allies and the candidates would be announced soon.

Soren said the JMM-led alliance was confident of retaining power in the state on the back of its development work.

The NDA on Friday announced its seat-sharing formula among its partners. The BJP will contest 68 seats, the AJSU Party 10, the JD(U) two and the LJP (Ram Vilas) one.

Filing of nomination papers for the 43 assembly constituencies of Jharkhand, which are going to polls on November 13 in the first phase, began on Friday and will continue till October 25.

In 2019, the JMM-led alliance won 47 seats in the Jharkhand Assembly, including 30 of the JMM and 16 of the Congress.

The BJP had secured 25 seats, the JVM-P three, the AJSU Party two, the CPI-ML and the NCP one each, and two seats were bagged by independents.

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