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No alliance with Congress: Pawar

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar today predicted a hung Parliament after the Lok Sabha polls and ruled out his party entering into any electoral understanding either with the National Democratic Alliance or with the Congress.

No single party would be able to get a majority in the coming polls, Pawar said ,but chose to remain non committal on the NCP's role in the event of a fractured mandate.

He told newspersons in Bhubaneswar that the NCP was closely following the developments in the Janata Dal and it would decide the poll tie-up with the JD only after the Dal's final stand on electoral alliances.

Making it clear that the NCP would make the foreign credentials of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi an electoral issue, Pawar said the BJP would be the party's main opponent in some states and the Congress in others.

Pawar claimed that his party would create a strong base in Assam, Meghalaya, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala and also in Bihar where the response was beyond their expectation.

On Congress criticism that the NCP, despite tall claims of roping in a large number of Congress leaders, particularly in the North-East, had drawn a feeble response, P A Sangma, who was also present at the news conference, said the NCP was not making any effort to rope in Congressmen. Instead, it was trying to build up a new and younger leadership everywhere.

UNI

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