NCP wants alliance with Cong: Sangma

NCP leader and former Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma on Tuesday said there was a consensus in the party on the need to align with the Congress for the forthcoming Assembly polls. He said the NCP central team headed by him would submit a report in this regard to the party president within three days and recommend that the NCP party high command convey to the Congress that the alliance must continue in Maharashtra.

Sangma was speaking after a two-day interaction of the NCP’s central team,led by him,with the party’s Maharashtra cadres to assess the political situation in the run-up to the Assembly polls. NCP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel,another member of the team,will hold preliminary discussions with the Congress in New Delhi on Tuesday night,said Sangma.

He said NCP members wished that a decision regarding the alliance be taken by July 15 considering the changed boundaries of the Assembly seats after delimitation. “Consensus (within the NCP) was clearly in favour of an alliance,” said Sangma while replying to questions over Union Heavy Industries Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s demand that the Congress go it alone in the Assembly polls. He added that NCP chief Sharad Pawar had more charisma in Maharahstra than Congress president Sonia Gandhi and said some people in the NCP had voiced the need for the party to contest the polls alone.