With the party putting up a dismal show in Assembly polls, Congress top brass including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party chief Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday held deliberations ahead of the budget session of Parliament.
The party’s Core Group meeting assumes significance as the results have left the Congress in an unenviable situation with little room to manoeuvre at a time when allies like Trinamool Congress have opposed a number of key decisions of the Centre.
That the party will attempt to reach out to the allies as well as Opposition was clear earlier in the day with Gandhi expressing hope that they will support the UPA on issues of public importance if they are taken into confidence.
“My view is that and it is also of the Prime Minister and Government that if we continuously and regularly keep in touch with and talk to our coalition partners as well to the Opposition parties, I have every hope that on issues, which are beneficial to the people of the country, they will understand and they will support,” Gandhi said.
She was talking to reporters at the AICC headquarters here after reviewing the party’s performance in the Assembly polls in her one to one meeting with party office bearers including the AICC in-charge for the states that went to polls.
Amid strains with Trinamool Congress, Congress had said that it was open to the idea of a UPA coordination committee to bring greater cohesion within.
There has been no formal mechanism in the ruling coalition for consultations among allies, and parties like Trinamool Congress and NCP have favoured such formal or informal arrangements.
–Agencies