By IANS,
New Delhi : The Congress Monday reaffirmed that it was in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), days after a senior leader said the party should go it alone in the Maharashtra assembly elections.
“The Congress and the NCP are in alliance since 1999. They are a part of the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) and this is the ground reality. The Congress party is a democratic party. Different people in the party have different views on different issues,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters here.
“But the final view is taken by the CWC (Congress Working Committee) and the Congress leadership. There is no restriction in voicing personal opinions in a party forum like Sandesh,” Tewari said.
The statement came after senior Congress leader Anil Shastri, who is editor of the Congress mouthpiece Sandesh and a special invitee to the CWC, wrote that the party should fight the assembly elections in Maharashtra alone rather than in alliance with the NCP.
“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 said in the latest issue of Sandesh.
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 had 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.