Deshmukh wants Congress to contest Maha polls on its own

NEW DELHI: Buoyed by his party's success in the general elections, senior Congress leader Vilasrao Deshmukh on Sunday pitched for contesting the upcoming assembly polls in Maharashtra on its own.

"We want to contest assembly elections in Maharashtra without aligning with any other party," he told reporters here. Congress and NCP have been running a coalition government in Maharashtra for over nine years.

Deshmukh, who has been chief minister for nearly seven years, is a strong votary of Congress contesting the elections alone. "We will put up a proposal before the Congress high command to go alone in Maharashtra assembly elections," he said.

Deshmukh said Congress' experiment of contesting polls on its own in Uttar Pradesh under the leadership of AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi had shown excellent results.

"We wanted to contest the Lok Sabha elections. We will try to go alone in assembly," he said.

Deshmukh rejected suggestions that Congress fared well in the elections due to the division of votes by presence of MNS candidates in the fray.

"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's clean image and the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were instrumental in the success of Congress," he said.