Pushing the NCP into a veritable corner, the Congress is aiming to drive its hardest bargain over seat-sharing for the forthcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections, even as the risk of terminating its decade old partnership in the state and contesting the polls separately.
Alliance talks are yet to begin formally between the two parties but the Congress has already begun muscle flexing, contending that seat sharing should be on basis of performance in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.
?The Congress won 18 seats compared to the eight managed by the NCP. So why shouldn?t the seats be distributed on that basis?? a senior Maharashtra leader remarked on Wednesday. If seats in the Assembly polls were to be distributed on this basis, then the NCP would get less than a hundred out of 288 Assembly seats while the Congress would stake claim on 180 plus seats. The NCP had got 122 seats in the last Assembly polls with the Congress contesting the remaining 166 seats.
Senior Congress players in Maharashtra are already pitching the ?lets be difficult? line by publicly voicing the view that the party should go alone, letting government formation be dealt through post-poll alliances. These voices include former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh and union minister Prithviraj Chavan. Party leaders claim that internal surveys conducted recently give the Congress between 100 to 120 seats out of the 288 even without an alliance with the NCP. On the other hand, NCP is expected to end up with 35 to 45 seats, which would mean that the Congress would have much better bargaining powers at its disposal in a post-poll situation. This scenario was understood to have been conveyed to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi by senior leader AK Antony, incharge of Maharashtra when he met her on Tuesday.
The Congress leaders claim the ?go it alone? line has the backing of party scion Rahul Gandhi, who is not averse to a UP type of experiment. In fact, the bold assertions by senior Congress leaders are viewed as a reflection of this line. ?Why not? If the party fights polls on its own, it can accommodate more people and help strengthen the party? Vilas Rao Deshmukh said.
However, it is point out that Sharad Pawar, being a veteran and well-versed with Congress tactics, would not be that easy to negotiate. In fact, they concede that it was Pawar, who had outsmarted Congress strategists in the last Assembly polls when he secured some additional seats in his kitty by fielding independents. Pawar, on his part would try to get as near as possible to the seat distribution formula adopted in the last Assembly polls.
The party is also conscious of the impact it would have on the UPA at the Centre in a post-Maharashtra election scenario in the event that Pawar?s clout is significantly eroded. There is a fear that Pawar would then gang up with the likes of Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav against the Congress.