New Delhi, January 15
Five years after they parted company, political compulsions pushed Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar to seek each other out.
Risking a split in his own party, Mr Pawar not only invited Ms Gandhi for tea to his residence today to discuss a possible Congress-NCP alliance for the coming Lok Sabha polls, but also stated that her foreign origin would not be an impediment in working with the Congress.
“ I have already said we are not going to raise that issue at this juncture. When political parties decide to work together, some issues have to be left out,” Mr Pawar observed, when he and Ms Gandhi addressed waiting mediapersons together after their hour-long meeting.
Describing today’s meeting as successful, Ms Gandhi said their discussion had focussed on how their respective parties could work together with other like-minded parties in the coming Lok Sabha elections so as to defeat the BJP. The Congress President also explained that Mr Pawar had
suggested they meet over tea when she called him up two days ago to discuss the present political situation in the light of the coming General Elections.
Mr Pawar, who is under severe pressure from his Maharashtra unit to re-negotiate its alliance with the Congress, said the first meeting basically dwelt on the possibility of the two parties working together and providing a viable alternative to the BJP-led NDA. He said the process had been initiated and “our effort will be to bring like-minded parties together”.
This was the first one-to-one meeting between the two leaders after Mr Pawar’s exit from the Congress in 1999 although their parties have been running a coalition government in Maharashtra for over four years. The last time Ms Gandhi spoke to Mr Pawar was to canvass support for Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde during the vice-presidential elections.
In addition to her evening meeting with the NCP leader, Ms Gandhi drove down to BSP leader Mayawati’s Humayun Road residence this morning to greet her on her birthday. The Congress President, who came armed with a bouquet of flowers and a gift, later maintained that she had only come to greet Ms Mayawati and no political issues were taken up during their discussions.
The meeting, which follows Ms Gandhi’s telephone call to the BSP leader about a fortnight ago, has led to considerable speculation about a Congress-BSP electoral pact in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Having been reduced to a negligible force in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh and after its recent defeats in three Hindi heartland states, the Congress strategists believe a tie-up with the BSP would boost its prospects in these
states. The BSP, which is also keen on forging an alliance with a national party, is expected to take a final view on this issue at its national executive meeting tomorrow. Worried that a Congress-BSP tie-up might be in the offing, the BJP also rushed its General Secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to greet Ms Mayawati in a desperate bid to woo her back. “As of now, we cannot rule an alliance with any party, including the BSP,” Mr Naqvi told reporters later.
Ever since her December 28 rally in Mumbai where Ms Gandhi spoke of building an alternate alliance of progressive and secular forces, the Congress President has made personel contact with all potential allies. She began by calling on the CPM leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet, followed it up by telephoning the DMK chief M.Karunanidhi to congratulate him on leaving the NDA and then walked across to her neighbour Lok Janshakti leader Ram Vilas Paswan. Working on the objective of reaching out to all parties opposed to the BJP, Ms Gandhi also sent AICC secretary Subodh Kant Sahay to the RKP leader Kalyan Singh on his birthday.
