Cong on collision course with allies

NEW DELHI: The Congress is grappling with difficult allies in the states, two years after it has come to power at the Centre at the head of the United Progressive Alliance. Congress’s predicament has come into focus in two states recently — Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu — where the party is engaged in a tussle with the regional allies, the NCP and the DMK, in different ways.

The Congress might have, at least on the face of it, upheld the principles of alliance dharma in Tamil Nadu by refusing to back the demand of its own partymen in the state for a share in power, citing a pre-poll understanding to that effect.

But in Maharashra, where the Congress is more equal to the NCP than it is to the DMK in Tamil Nadu, its behaviour in a recent legislative council election has sown seeds of mistrust between the two partners. In both states, however, round one seems to have gone to the allies.

In Maharashtra, the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance is in choppy waters. The two parties are all set to fight it out for a forthcoming Rajya Sabha by-election from the state after the NCP went public with its grouse against the Congress for having cornered the fourth seat in the recent Maharashtra Legislative Council elections.

Getting back at the Congress for having sprung the surprise candidature of Rajan Teli for the fourth seat and engineering his victory by getting Sena members to cross vote, NCP Chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar seems to have settled for a tit for tat strategy.

The NCP has decided to join hands with the opposition BJP and Shiva Sena for the upcoming RS polls to back the candidature of industrialist Rahul Bajaj who is standing as an independent. The Congress has fielded its own candidate, ex-MLA and Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Avinash Pandey.

The NCP’s decision to go public with its complaints against the Congress for causing the defeat of its candidate in the MLC elections, is message to the Congress-led UPA at the Centre that it cannot take the NCP for granted.

According to sources Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s political Secretary Ahmed Patel had called up Mr Pawar on Monday morning in a bid to pacify the NCP and ask it to back the Congress candidate for the RS polls. However, with this attempt having come to naught, the Congress had little choice but to put up its own candidate.

In Tamil Nadu, the Congress high command decided against asking for a share of power. But this move of keeping the DMK in good humor, comes at the price of upsetting the local cadre which has been more than vocal about wanting to join the government.

The Congress has come within striking distance of power in Tamil Nadu after being systematically marginalised by the two Dravidian parties over the last forty years. The issue was slated for discussion between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Monday during his visit to the Capital.

However, the DMK stalwart declared after the meeting that the issue was not brought up at all as there was a pre-poll understanding about a ‘single party government’. The Congress might have the prudence to take this line at the moment, but as of now it is alliance pressure that is guiding its reflexes.