NCP to go solo in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura

Sharad Pawar-led NCP on Tuesday said it will fight the coming assembly elections in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura on its own.

"We will contest a large number of assembly seats in Meghalaya, and a few in Nagaland and a token number of seats in Tripura," Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) General Secretary Praful Patel told journalists here.

In Meghalaya, the party will field candidates in 22 of the 24 assembly seats under Tura parliamentary constituency in the Garo Hills region and around 20 of the 36 seats in Khasi-Jaintia Hills region under Shillong parliamentary constituency.

The five-year terms of the assemblies in Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura, with 60 seats each, will expire on March 6, 13, and 14, respectively.

Although, the NCP has decided not to forge alliance with the Congress in the three states, Patel said his party will have some kind of "understanding with some regional parties" in Meghalaya.

"We will be clearer on this (understanding with some regional parties) as we approach the elections in the comings weeks," the NCP leader said.

Patel said: "We have always been an ally of the Congress in Maharastha and at the Centre but as we speak we do not have any alliance with the Congress at any level."

"But that does not mean that likeminded secular parties cannot work together in future. In Meghalaya, the NCP is however on its own and we will chart our own course depending on what we think is best for the state," the former Union Minister said.

Patel hit out at the ruling Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government in the north-eastern state, which the NCP is a part it, for its "mis-governance" in the last five years.

"Other political parties are trying to create their own space on various issues. The state government has failed miserably to provide good governance. There have been many complaints about the schemes it has launched," he said.

Without naming the Bharatiya Janata Party, Patel said that their divisive policies practised by imposing on others what one should eat or what religion one should follow and also imposition on one's culture would fragment society.

As for the National People's Party, founded by late Purno Agitok Sangma, one of the founding-members of the NCP, Patel said: "The NPP, now headed by Sangma's youngest son Conrad K. Sangma, should clarify whether it accepts what all the BJP says or does."

--IANS

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