Praful Patel, NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s second-in-command, after a working committee meeting of the party said that the party’s senior leaders had agreed “to work with like-minded parties for the coming elections.”
He did not specifically mention the Congress, but dropped enough indications to the effect that NCP was aiming at a more inclusive opposition front.
“We will work with Mamata Banerjee,” he said pointedly. Sources say the statement reflects the irritation within Mr Pawar’s party about the Congress being difficult about strategically playing states like Goa so that the two parties are not up against each other. Sharad Pawar has personally spoken with Sonia Gandhi for the alliance in Goa but the congress is not ready to give seats, the NCP is demanding seven seats in the alliance which is not forthcoming from Gundu Rao or P Chidambaram.
There is, so far, neither an official tie-up nor a behind-the-scenes strategy on slicing and dicing turf so that the parties have sway over different regions or constituencies.
When Mamata Banerjee was fighting for re-election in May, the Congress did not ally with her. After she won a third term in Bengal -her biggest result yet – her ire at the Congress has escalated because she says they are ready to fight the BJP aggressively.
It is against this background of Mamata’s offensive against the Congress that the Sena has stepped up as an unlikely emergency contact for Rahul Gandhi. For months, Congressmen in Maharashtra have publicly chided the Sena despite their coalition. That sniping has been allegedly predicated on Mr Gandhi’s running discomfort with being a partner of the Sena, whose ideology he sees as non-secular.
But over the weekend, the Sena ran an editorial in its mouthpiece that, despite Mamata’s visit to Thackeray, she was probably helping the BJP by venting against the Congress. The need of the hour, the editorial underscored, is for the Opposition to work together to displace PM Modi in the next general election in 2024.
With inputs from NDTV