BMC polls: NCP seeks equal treatment from Congress

The Congress is under pressure from its ambitious ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), to treat it as an equal partner in the forthcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections in February 2012. This comes thanks to the latter’s emergence as the leading party in the municipal councils polls across the state.

While MPCC chief Manikrao Thakre said the seat-sharing would be worked out in detail after considering views from both sides, the NCP top leadership in a core committee meeting held shortly after the council polls took a decision to demand a sizeable seat share in the BMC polls. In fact, a senior NCP minister told DNA that the party should now “assert itself to ensure a respectable bargain”. “Ideally, we will begin the discussions demanding 100 seats of the 227 seats in the BMC,” the senior minister said.

Recalling how the alliance fell through earlier in the 2007 BMC polls, an NCP official said, “The then Congress, which agreed to set aside only 67 seats  for the NCP, was unwilling to leave its claim for a seat held by its corporator Rajhans Singh. But, in the past five years, public works by the NCP has helped it make major inroads in city and suburbs and this cannot be overlooked by the Congress,” added the official.

Complaining about the “big brother attitude” of the Congress, the NCP official said, “What’s clearly upset the NCP leadership is the dismissive manner in which an internal assessment by the Mumbai and Maharashtra Congress declared that the NCP did not deserve more than 47 seats.”

State NCP chief Madhukar Picchad urged the Congress to consider the ground realties before jumping to conclusions. “From the very beginning, we have maintained our readiness for an alliance with the Congress and I am sure the Congress leadership will show the same approach.”