Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 4
With the stalemate over government formation in Maharashtra continuing, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress are keeping their future options open for the while. Both parties are learnt to have decided to wait and watch the situation.
NCP supremo Sharad Pawar threw hints of possibilities of an alternative government after meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
“I apprised her of the ground situation in Maharashtra where the current mood of the people is against the BJP. We have decided to meet again. As of today, we do not have the numbers to form the government and the mandate to us is to sit in the Opposition but you cannot say what will happen in the future,” said Pawar.
Asked if NCP would back the Shiv Sena and the Congress would also come on board, Pawar said, “As of today, neither has the Sena chief spoken to us, nor given us a proposal and nor have we given them any proposal. But what I see from Sena’s writings in its mouthpiece is that they want the Maharashtra government to be formed under their leadership. That I see.”
Sources said the two allies didn’t want to be unduly rigid to an evolving political situation. “Although the Congress leadership has reservations about backing the Shiv Sena, which is ideologically apart from us, most top Maharashtra Congress leaders want the party to take a practical view of the current situation in which keeping the BJP away would be a greater necessity,” said a senior AICC source.
The Tribune has learnt that Maharashtra Congress seniors, including state president Balasaheb Thorat and former CMs Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan, met Sonia Gandhi before and urged her to take a pragmatic view on a possible alternative government.
AICC sources, meanwhile, said NCP and Congress want Shiv Sena to announce a clean break from the BJP for any meaningful debate on a post-poll alliance. “The BJP and Sena are known to flirt with one another. Sena has always played power politics. It needs to come clean and tell where it stands even though it continues to attack the BJP in its mouthpiece.”
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via Today’s News Headlines
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