New Delhi, September 10: Uncertainty loomed large over the issue of alliance between the Congress and NCP for the Maharashtra assembly elections with no indication of the two parties making any move to begin talks for seat sharing.
NCP chief and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar returned to Mumbai after a three-day stay here in which it was expected that he would hold talks with Congress leaders on the alliance issue.
A meeting of the NCP Parliamentary Board is scheduled in Mumbai tomorrow amid ample indications by the party that it would go ahead and contest all the 288 seats in the state if the alliance with the Congress did not materialise at the earliest.
Pawar had asked the Congress to be “pragmatic” in its thinking and pitched for at least the 2004 seat sharing formula if there were any hurdles.
A meeting of the Congress Core Group was held in Delhi this evening which was presided over by party chief Sonia Gandhi and attended among others by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Defence Minister A K Antony, who is in-charge of party affairs in Maharashtra is also a member of the high-level group.
While what transpired in the meeting was not immediately known, it took place in the backdrop of question over the alliance issue in Maharashtra as also on the issue of successor to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy who killed in a helicopter crash last week. .
—Agencies