The Congress and the National Conference finalised the seat-sharing formula for the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections on Monday, a day before the deadline for filing nominations for the first phase of polls.
The 90-member house goes to polls in three phases from September 18 to October 1 and the votes will be counted on October 4.
As per the deal, the NC will contest 51 seats while the Congress 32. Two seats have been allotted to the CPI(M) and the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party.
In remaining five seats, Congress and NC will hold a "friendly but disciplined contest", said J&K Congress president Tariq Hamid Qarra.
The list of seats each party will be contesting, as well as the names of the candidates, will be issued in due course, Qarra said.
The two parties arrived at a consensus on seat-sharing after a meeting at the residence NC president Farooq Abdullah and vice president Omar Abdullah in Srinagar in the afternoon. Congress leaders, including party's general secretary organisation K.C. Venugopal, Salman Khurshid, and J&K in-charge Bharat Solanki attended the meeting.
The meeting was held after "some differences" cropped up in seat-sharing arrangement during the talks between the local leadership of the parties.
Meanwhile, the BJP on Monday issued a list of 16 candidates for the first phase of polls. In the last assembly elections held in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014, when it was a full-fledged state, the saffron party had won 25 seats.
