MUMBAI, 11 June 2008 — Alliance partner Nationalist Congress Party is humiliating Congress party workers at the local level and “it’s better we sit out of the government,” Maharashtra Congress chief Prabha Rau said yesterday.
Everywhere, in urban as well as rural areas, NCP has been making life difficult for Congress workers and this has been communicated to the party high command, Rau said.
She said Congress should contest the next parliamentary and assembly elections alone, but made it clear it was her personal opinion.
In Delhi, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi yesterday. On Friday he met Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Sonia.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary in charge of Maharashtra Margaret Alva, who is also camping in Mumbai, said yesterday that the alliance with NCP had weakened Congress. “We find it very strange that our allies should choose to side with communal forces for the sake of capturing power.”
Meanwhile, president of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajnath Singh, who is in Mumbai, blamed the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi for everything from rising inflation to a “soft” stand on China.
Exuding confidence that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would return to power after the next general election, Singh blasted the UPA for “losing the diplomatic edge” with China. “The NDA didn’t allow the strategic expansion of China that the UPA is allowing now. The UPA is placating China because it is dependant on leftist support for survival,” he alleged.
