NCP, Cong still at yakking stage

MUMBAI: With just 30 days to go for the BMC polls, the Congress and the NCP have still to firm up a formal alliance. Both the parties would resume their talks on January 3, sources said. A final decision on alliance and seat-sharing is likely this week as the filing of nominations for the polls begins on January 8.

Sources said the talks are eating up so much of time to reach some sort of agreement because of the upcoming elections to the zilla parishads (ZP) and panchayat samitis (PS). Unlike the Congress, the NCP is not in favour of a tie-up with the Congress for the ZPs and PS since it stands on a firmer ground than the Congress, sources pointed out.

Recent polls to municipal councils, which the Congress and the NCP contested independently, have given the Congress a lot to worry about. Though the Congress has bagged maximum seats, the NCP has done remarkably well in the council polls.

“The Congress fears that the NCP may do well in the zilla parishad and samiti polls. And since it’s stronger there, the NCP may not need to strike an alliance with us for the ZP polls,” a Congress leader said. The NCP is exploiting this weak link in the Congress gameplan to bargain for more seats in the BMC polls, sources added.

Under the three-tier system of Panchayat Raj, district-level zilla parishads and tehsil-level panchayat samitis have always had a huge impact on the outcome of the Assembly polls. Politics at the district level has traditionally held the key to Maharashtra’s political supremacy and rural polls are far more important for the Congress and the NCP than the electoral exercise in urban centres.

“In particular, the NCP is more interested in the zilla parishad polls because the political equations at the district level have a decisive bearing on the Assembly configurations.

The zilla parishad polls offer NCP the much-awaited opportunity to test its strength right at the ground zero level of Maharashtra politics. Municipal corporations’ impact counts little insofar as Assembly polls go, but that’s not the case with the zilla parishads and panchayat samitis,” a senior NCP leader said.

The NCP, sources said, is in no mood to team up with the Congress for the ZP and PS polls. “Though we have proved in the recent polls to municipal councils that the NCP is a force to reckon with in semi-urban areas, it’s the rural Maharashtra which is a real test for us.

We would like to capture as many district bodies as possible on our own and an alliance with the Congress would run contrary to our game-plan. We could surprise the Congress in the council polls because we went all alone,” an NCP functionary said.