Mumbai, Dec. 31 -- Three days after the Congress and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) announced an alliance for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections with a seat-sharing split of 165-62, the latter returned 16 seats to the Congress on Tuesday after it failed to get strong candidates. Confirming the same, VBA spokesperson Siddharth Mokale said, "The decision was taken after we failed to get appropriate candidates, and asked the Congress to field the desired candidates." The VBA is now left with 46 of the 227 seats in the BMC. Meanwhile, the Congress shared six seats from its quota to the Mahadev Jankar-led Rashtriya Samaj Paksha. Elsewhere, the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) announced its third list, taking the total number of candidates to 94. The party is contesting the BMC polls independently after its Mahayuti partners, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena, decided to exclude them from their alliance in the city. A close examination of the list of candidates reveals that the party has fielded a large number of candidates from the Muslim community-23. Despite being part of a saffron alliance in the state, the NCP has maintained that it has not given up its secular credentials....