NCP will contest elections with the UPA: Pawar after Third Front meet

Mumbai: Amidst a flutter about NCP sharing a platform at a Left-led political convention in Delhi yesterday, Sharad Pawar said that the participation was with an intention of keeping the “communal forces” at bay.

“The NCP will be part of the UPA and contest elections together,” the NCP chief said on the sidelines of a function in Virar, in the adjoining Thane district today.

Eyebrows were raised in political corridors after NCP leader DP Tripathi attended the Convention for People’s Unity Against Communalism convened by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in New Delhi yesterday.

Incidentally, the NCP was the only UPA constituent to attend the convention.

NCP leader and Union Minister for Heavy Industries Praful Patel had said yesterday that his party has kept “all options open” and its alliance with the Congress is limited to two states, namely Maharashtra and Gujarat.

However, Pawar seems to have diluted the party’s stand and said that the party is with the Congress.

Maharashtra NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said that his party associated with a non-UPA alliance, in order to explore options of new partners after next year’s Lok Sabha elections. “There is a possibility of a fractured mandate and in such a scenario, we have been trying to tap possible partners to be part of the UPA,” he said.

PTI