The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) did a no-show at the Opposition meeting convened on Friday evening here, even as Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar, a member of the breakaway Janata Dal (United) that owes allegiance to Sharad Yadav, participated in the discussions.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who presided over the meeting attended by 16 parties — the other party missing was the Kerala Congress (Mani) that had excused itself as the date coincided with its party convention) — was authorised to set up a smaller committee that will discuss and coordinate with all the parties on a programme of action for the next three months, ahead of the winter session of Parliament. The issues that are to be highlighted, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who briefed the press after the meeting, said were agrarian distress, rising unemployment, atrocities on Dalits, Muslims and other vulnerable sections. If the meeting did not touch on the NCP’s absence, party MP Praful Patel told Aaj Tak he was annoyed that the Congress had not believed that one of its MLAs had indeed provided the 44th winning vote to the latter’s senior leader Ahmed Patel in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls.
‘Not the B team’
The NCP, Mr. Praful Patel said, was not the Congress’s B team, it was not in alliance with it in any State, and yet it had extended support in the Gujarat RS polls. Despite this, he said, the Congress spokesperson in Gujarat had blamed the NCP.