Congress on Wednesday said that it will not have any electoral alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly polls.
The Congress on Wednesday said that it will not have any electoral alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the Assembly polls. State Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki said that the Congress, which is ideologically fighting the BJP, can not tie up with any party which is close to the BJP. “The NCP seems to have become the B-team of BJP after its two MLAs voted for BJP candidates in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. Therefore, no electoral alliance is possible with the party,” Solanki told mediapersons here.
Solanki said the decision of the state unit has been communicated to the party high command. The announcement comes after state Congress leaders and MLAs met party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi on Monday. At the meeting, which was attended by party’s Gujarat affairs in-charge Ashok Gehlot, the party had discussed strategy for the polls.
The relations between the two parties, which had fought last two Assembly elections together, soured after the closely-contested Rajya Sabha elections, which had become a prestige issue for the party after BJP fielded one of the Congress rebel MLAs as its candidate. While NCP MLA Kandhal Jadeja openly announced that he voted for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election, his colleague Jayant Patel alias Bosky had said that he voted for Congress nominee Ahmed Patel. The Congress has been outrightly rejecting Bosky’s claim, saying Patel got only 44 votes of which 43 came from Congress MLAs and one from Janata Dal (United) MLA Chhotubhai Vasava.
Last week, the NCP had claimed that it had not received invite from the Congress for the latter’s “khedut mahasammelan’’ (farmers’ grand convention), which will be held at Pardi in Valsad district on September 1. The Congress, which is trying to forge a united front of all the opposition parties for the Assembly polls, had invited several opposition leaders to attend the convention.
