NCP calls off alliance with Cong for polls

After days of haggling over seat sharing for the upcoming BMC and TMC elections, the NCP called off its alliance with the Congress for the February 1 polls, accusing the party of harbouring misplaced notions about its strength. The bone of contention was two seats held by Congress leaders Rajhans Singh and Dyaneshwar Nikam. The two are bitter rivals of NCP leaders Nawab Mallick and Bashir Moosa Patel.

Mumbai NCP president Nawab Mallick accused state Congress president Gurudas Kamat and the Sunil Dutt camp, led by MP Priya Dutt, of thwarting the NCP’s attempts to forge an alliance. Sources said that in the 2002 elections, Rajhans Singh defeated Mallick’s brother at the hustings, while Nikam had worked against Patel in the last civic polls.

Late on Saturday evening, Kamat said, “I am not going to comment on their accusations. I do not care for what they (NCP) say. We gave them 65 seats which was thrice their actual strength. Actually it was the NCP which came up with the seat sharing offer. They staked claim on two of our sitting seats’’.

Earlier in the day, city NCP president and MLA Sachin Ahir accused the Congress of giving the NCP a raw deal on seat sharing. Expressing regret that the two ruling Democratic Front government allies could not reach a pre-poll agreement this time round, Ahir declared that his party would contest all the 227 seats in the BMC and 116 seats in Thane Municipal Corporation.

He further added that after handing over the list of seats for exchange, the Congress later created confusion by staking claim over NCPs sitting seats and those on which the NCP was placed second runner up. He said that the Congress even staked claim on a civic seat in Umerkhadi assembly segment held by a sitting NCP MLA.