After attending a Diwali get-together at the city district Congress office, Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee president CD Patel told the Press here on Monday that party was in touch with the All India Rashtriya Janata Party and the Janata Dal on this issue. ``Our objective is to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and for that, it is also possible that the Congress may decide to support the candidate of a like-minded party to defeat the BJP,'' he said.

Patel said the decision on the Bharuch candidate would be taken by November seven. The party had received a few applications for candidature. He said that the State unit might short-list the candidates list before sending the same to Delhi.

Parrying questions on the ethnic profile of the likely candidate, Patel said any thing could emerged as thefinal outcome and it would be premature to say anything now. However, indications available from the party circles indicate that a tribal candidate had more chances of being nominated compared to a minority community candidate for this constituency which has a sizeable number of minority votes.

Meanwhile, in a statement here, Patel has lamented that the present BJP government was doing nothing except making loud announcements and lofty promises to the people without keeping track of action taken by the bureaucracy. He said the State's BJP-controlled government could not even extract a respectable amount of assistance to tackle natural calamities like Kandla cyclone or Surat floods from its own Government at the Centre while other states ruled by BJP's allies were getting hefty sums as relief from the Centre.