PUNE: Federal Minister for Agriculture and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar said here on Sunday evening that his party would continue to remain in alliance with the Congress party and will fight the forthcoming polls to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly as allies.
Recently, former state Chief Minister and Congress party leader Vilasrao Deshmukh had stated that he was in favor of Congress fighting the state polls independently instead of going in with alliance with the NCP. Similar demands were also made by other Congress leaders in the state.
In a reference to Deshmukh’s comments, Pawar said “irrespective of the views expressed by some state Congress leaders that their party should fight the assembly polls on its own, the NCP would fight the polls together. Whatever Deshmukh is saying is his personal viewpoint and not that of the Congress and only the Congress High Command has the discretion to take a decision,” Pawar said.
Commenting on the poor performance of the NCP in the Lok Sabha polls, Pawar said that the party would shortly hold a meeting in Mumbai to review the performance and will do an introspection.
Pawar admitted that one of the reasons behind the poor performance was the “over confidence” on the part of some of the NCP leaders, which led to the loss of two seats in its stronghold, in particular, a reference to Pune and Kolhapur.
Blaming his party leaders, Pawar said that had they acted seriously without being over confident.
“We are trying to figure out the factors that led to the poor performance, so that the pitfalls could be corrected ahead of the assembly polls,” he said.
To a question, whether the participation of Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in the polls had affected the NCP’s results, Pawar denied it but agreed that the MNS had hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena candidates, and not the NCP.
“If Raj thinks that his MNS had snatched the NCP votes, then I dare the MNS to contest the assembly polls against his party.” Taking potshots at Raj, Pawar said that the MNS chief was daydreaming of becoming the state chief minister.
