After facing internal dissent, Congress party is now being targeted by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), its ally, for UPA’s electoral rout. Even as senior leader Praful Patel said Congress had ignored its allies and failed to counter BJP, party chief Sharad Pawar indicated that NCP will demand more seats for the Maharashtra polls in October.
“During the last election, Congress demanded more seats for the State assembly polls saying that they had performed better than us. This time, we have performed better than them in the Lok Sabha so our leaders will need to remind them about this while discussing seat sharing,” Mr. Pawar said at a meeting of party leaders called to discuss the debacle.
The Congress-NCP alliance won only six of the 48 seats in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha polls. However, NCP won four seats compared to the two seats won by Congress. For the 2009 State assembly polls, Congress had contested 174 seats and NCP 114 seats.
Former Union Minister Praful Patel squarely blamed Congress for the electoral drubbing. “The Prime Minister and other leaders of Congress were not able to counter BJP’s propaganda on the 2G or the coal issue. As the main party in UPA, Congress had the prime responsibility,” he said.
Mr. Patel said the leadership vacuum in Congress had impacted UPA’s campaign. “On one hand, we had BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not be seen in the last two-and-a-half months. Rahul Gandhi led the Congress campaign but he was not declared the official prime ministerial candidate,” Mr. Patel pointed out.
He added that Congress had failed to consult its allies during UPA-II’s term and sent the wrong signal by contradicting cabinet decisions. “We did not attend several cabinet meetings because we were not being consulted and there was no political dialogue between Congress and its allies,” he said.
The Congress has countered NCP. “The defeat of Congress candidates at many places was because of the non-cooperation of NCP and their refusal to work in the alliance,” said Congress Minister Narayan Rane. State Congress chief Manikrao Thakre said, “Issues like seat sharing should not be discussed in the media but at a meeting between our parties.”
