Pawar begins parleys to broker alliance for ensuing LS elections

MUMBAI, JULY 13: Sharad Pawar has begun the formal round of discussions with various political parties in the state that are well dispose...

MUMBAI, JULY 13: Sharad Pawar has begun the formal round of discussions with various political parties in the state that are well disposed towards his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). A late evening meeting with the left-of-Centre parties in the state followed by a serious of discussions today is expected to set the tone for an alliance or seat-sharing in the forthcoming elections.

Pawar, along with state leaders Chhagan Bhujbal and Madhukar Pichad, was scheduled to meet leaders and representatives of the Janata Dal, Peasants and Workers Party, Communist Party of India, and possibly the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Though the Samajwadi Party (SP) will be part of the alliance, with SP chief Mulayam Singh supporting Pawar, SP leaders in Mumbai are not part of the discussions. The decisions will be taken in New Delhi, Pawar explained.

Meanwhile, the party wants all factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI) to be part of the alliance and accordingly all faction leaders have been contacted.However, it’s still unclear if all of them will go along with the NCP, Pawar said to a group of journalists here on return from his Aurangabad tour where he addressed a large congregation of Muslims.

Story continues below this ad

The party is working on the premise that the elections to Lok Sabha and state assembly will be held simultaneously, Pawar said, and the NCP would contest all the 48 and 288 seats respectively with the exception of those, where their alliance partners stand a better chance of winning. “That is the basis of the alliance. If some other party’s candidate is in a better position to win a particular seat, we will give it to them. But at this point I can’t say how many such seats there will be,” he remarked.

Pawar was unfazed by Sena remarks that the secular vote would be split between the Congress and NCP. “They are not aware of the split in their own vote. A sizable chunk of the Sena vote is likely to split, some of the BJP vote will also split,” he said.

About the re-negotiated Enron deal, Pawar remarkedthat the basic purpose behind privatisation of power generation was nullified since the state government and MSEB had now invested between Rs 500-870 crore in the project. “If we had that much, we could have invested 20-30 per cent in our own MSEB plant and the World Bank or International Finance Corporation would have lent us the rest. The purpose was to get private investment in generation so that MSEB and government could concentrate their resources on system improvement,” he said. He is studying the issue to examine whether it can exploited during the election campaign, he added.

On Kargil, Pawar was emphatic that the Opposition parties will and should start talking about the lapses when the last of intruders is pushed back. “We did have some information but the time was not right to talk about such matters since our soldiers were so valiantly fighting on the front. If we said anything, the government and Army officials would have been hard-pressed for explanations. But soon the government will haveto explain what it means by “its success” in Kargil,” he said.