Pawar ultimatum to Congress
While clarifying that he realises the importance of an alliance with the Congress at all levels, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has issued an ultimatum to the Congress regarding the alliance for the BMC elections, and instructed his party leaders on Sunday to finalise the seat sharing formula with the Congress by Monday evening or quit the alliance for the BMC polls.
Mr Pawar admitted that if the NCP wanted to keep at bay the parties that are playing politics in the name of caste and religion, it needed to be with Congress. “Even the Congress leadership approves our stand,” he said.
“But the decision on the seat sharing formula for the BMC election also needs to be taken at the earliest.”
In an earlier meeting with party workers, the NCP chief had stressed on this need for an early decision on having an alliance for the polls.
Political experts say that the ultimatum to the Congress was prompted by Mr Pawar’s past experiences.
In the 2007 BMC elections, a day prior to polls, the alliance talks failed as the two parties could not reach an agreement over one seat in the western suburbs.
The anti-alliance faction in the Congress has also started putting pressure on chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.
A delegation of Congress leaders, including Gurudas Kamat, Sanjay Nirupam, Baba Siddiqi, Baldev Khosa and Krishna Hegde met the CM at his residence and stressed that the NCP should not be offered more than 46 seats in the BMC election.
Mr Pawar has also issued instructions to his party’s senior leaders on how he wants the party to go about the forthcoming elections. “The party did well in the recent elections. But the results could have been better had the bigger leaders resisted the temptation to support their kin and had stayed with partymen during the election campaign,” he said.
The mistake shouldn’t repeat, Mr Pawar added.
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