The 15-year-old Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance in Maharashtra broke up on Thursday with the regional party deciding to contest next month's assembly polls on its own and pulling out of the government, setting the stage for its fall.
The development came a day after the Congress announced its candidates for 118 seats and the failure by the two parties to reach an amicable settlement, bringing to an end 15 years of uninterrupted Congress-NCP coalition government in the state.
The NCP-Congress tie-up came about in 1999 ironically even after Sharad Pawar led a revolt against Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin and formed the party. The NCP demanded that the two parties fight equal number of seats in 288-member assembly. In the last assembly elections, NCP had fought 114 seats and Congress 174.
"We have decided to end the alliance," state NCP president Sunil Tatkare told reporters blaming Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan for not carrying forward the talks for seat- sharing.
"We always behaved like a responsible ally of Congress and even took the initiative to expedite seat-sharing talks. We had demanded half of the state's 288 seats and the chief minister's post for 2.5 years.
"However, the Congress did not respond to our proposal by either rejecting it or forwarding a counter proposal," Praful Patel, senior party leader and a confidante of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, said.
Patel said the two sides met officially for the first time for seat-sharing talks on Tuesday but Chavan left for his hometown Karad on Wednesday without authorising anybody for negotiations.
"Since on Wednesday, there has been no communication," he said. Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, a bitter critic of Chavan, said the NCP would pull out of the government and hand over a letter to the state Governor in this regard on Friday.
