By IANS,
New Delhi : A senior Congress leader has said the party should fight the assembly elections in Maharashtra alone rather than in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
In the latest issue of Congress mouthpiece Sandesh, its editor Anil Shastri, who is also a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), said: “A larger chunk of Congresspersons in Maharashtra want to go it alone in the coming assembly elections. The Congress will be better off without a pre-poll alliance with the NCP. We should not let this opportunity go.”
Shastri is not the first Congress leader to oppose a poll alliance with the NCP in Maharashtra.
Earlier, former Maharashtra chief minister and now union Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Vilasrao Deshmukh had said the Congress should follow the Uttar Pradesh pattern and contest the assembly elections on its own.
Shastri also lauded the “risk taking ability” of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and said his decision to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh had paid handsomely.