‘Party with most seats will claim PM post’ NCP proposes 50-50 seat share with Cong

NCP chief Sharad Pawar said focus is to first unite nonnda parties, then decide on prime ministerial candidate

MUMBAI: Stressing the need to strengthen the state-level alliances of non-nda (National Democratic Alliance) parties, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Monday said the single-largest party can claim the Prime Minister’s post after the general elections.

At the same time, he also praised Congress president Rahul Gandhi for clarifying that he is not in the race for the post of Prime Minister.

Pawar made the statement after holding the party’s core committee meeting and meeting senior leaders to discuss the poll strategy for the upcoming elections in 2019.

“Currently, we are focusing on state-level alliances and making efforts to bring all political parties, who are not with NDA, on board. Let elections happen and let us together remove the BJP government. We will then sit together and decide,” Pawar told media persons. “The leader from the party with maximum number of MPS can be the prime ministerial candidate.”

He immediately added that the Congress president too has agreed to this. “I am happy that the Congress president has made it clear that he is not driven by Prime Ministerial ambitions,” said the NCP chief.

He said the general elections held in 1977 after the Emergency, imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and in 2004, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, were perfect examples to the questions being raised by some people on the alternative candidate to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Today’s scenario is similar to the situation before the general elections held in 1977 after the Emergency. No one could have thought of defeating the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi but she was defeated without having any one party or any one leader as the face of the Opposition. Janata Party was formed later and Morarji Desai was elected as the leader of the alliance,” Pawar said.

In 2004, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister and the BJP started ‘India Shining’ campaign with full vigour. Even then, there was no single party as an alternative to the BJP nor was there a face of the Opposition.

The Opposition came together and defeated the BJP and Dr Manmohan Singh was elected Prime Minister of the country, he said. MUMBAI:THE Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is keen to get an equal number of seats in Maharashtra to contest the coming elections in alliance with Congress. NCP chief Sharad Pawar has conveyed this to Congress president Rahul Gandhi in a recently held meeting.

In order to reach a consensus, the parties have now decided to form a joint committee of two senior leaders each to discuss the issue in detail. This was disclosed by Pawar in a meeting called to discuss strategy for the coming 2019 Lok Sabha elections, said a senior NCP leader, requesting anonymity.

“I have discussed the issue of seat-sharing with the Congress president. The committee comprises All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Ashok Gehlot and state Congress president Ashok Chavan along with NCP general secretary Praful Patel and state NCP chief Jayant Patil,” Pawar told reporters after the meeting.

In the meeting, the NCP chief has also asked party leaders to be prepared for both the Lok Sabha and assembly elections as there are chances that both the polls can be held at the same time.

Veering away from the election discussion, Pawar noted that the murderers of Dr Narendra Dabholkar and other rationalists follow an ideology which is spreading communalism.

“They are not against only Muslims but are against all secular people be it Sikh, Christian or any other. The way rationalists were killed, I see it as an attack on secularism,” the NCP chief said while meeting a delegation of Muslim scholars and leaders at YB Chavan on Monday.