NCP wants secular parties' alliance in Maharashtra

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) wants to cobble together a grand political alliance ahead of the 2009 general elections to include smaller secular parties.

During the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-Sena combine won 25 seats and the Congress-NCP combine 23. “If we want to win more than 30 out of 48 seats, it is necessary to ensure that there is no division of votes among the secular parties. And we should take all smaller secular parties along with us, including all the factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI), Peasants and Workers Party, Janata Dal (S), CPI(M) and the Samajwadi Party. If necessary, we should leave some seats for them from our quotas,” said a senior functionary in the NCP.

“Our party president and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has already publicly spoken about the need of secular parties coming together,” claimed NCP’s state unit spokesman Madan Bafana.

“In 1998, when we fought the Lok Sabha elections in the state under Pawar’s leadership, secular forces won 35 out of 48 seats as Pawar ensured all the factions of RPI, Janata Dal, CPI(M) and other parties were given a chance to contest the elections form their pockets of influence. It is possible to repeat similar results if we do the right kind of social engineering,” he said.