MUMBAI: The opposition to an alliance between Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress are getting stronger in spite of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and State Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh favoring a pact with the NCP in Maharashtra.
Several Congress Cabinet ministers and legislators are not in favor of a pre-poll alliance with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP in the Lok Sabha and in Maharashtra. Two powerful Congress Cabinet ministers, Patangrao Kadam and Ashok Chavan, have also begun campaigning against the alliance.
Deshmukh has strongly pleaded with senior Congress leaders to have a Congress-NCP alliance to ensure secular votes are not divided. However, he is facing stiff opposition from within the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) and his Cabinet ministers.
Several Congress legislators have written to Prabha Rau, state Congress chief, urging her not to join the NCP, which they allege intends to damage Congress' grass-roots strength.
To defuse the situation, Rau held a meeting of ministers and legislators yesterday to discuss poll preparations.
Ministers and legislators unanimously asked how the NCP could be trusted. One of the critics was Patangrao Kadam, minister for cooperation and relief and rehabilitation, who told Rau that Congress would be making a serious blunder it if enters into a pre-poll alliance with the NCP.
Kadam highlighted how Jayant Patil, NCP's finance minister, took the help of Shiv Sena and BJP to defeat Congress candidates in the Sangli municipal elections, which were held recently.
Although Rau agreed with the contention of the ministers and legislators, he expressed his helplessness and said that the anti-NCP statements were unfortunate. "The mood within the party is that we fight the polls alone," she said, adding that Congress high command and Sonia Gandhi lent support to coalition politics at a Mumbai rally last month, saying this was the way to defeat communal forces in the state.
In another related development, Arun Gujrathi, the NCP state president, hit back at the Congress stating that the NCP wants a 50-50 deal in the wake of elections. Speaking in Nagpur, Gujrathi said the NCP was prepared to face the general elections with or without a pre-poll alliance with Congress. In case of a pre-poll alliance with Congress, the NCP would stick to its demand of contesting 50 percent of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, said Gujrathi, adding that Sonia Gandhi and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar were in favor of fighting the elections together.
