MUMBAI, Jan 31: Congress ally NCP today sent conflicting signals on the issue of alliance in the Lok Sabha polls with party chief Sharad Pawar rubbishing reports of a meeting with Narendra Modi while another senior leader Praful Patel said “options are open”.
“News of my meeting with Narendra Modi in New Delhi on January 17 appeared in a newspaper. (It) is completely mischievous, baseless & false,” the Agriculture Minister said on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Pawar’s tweets followed a front page report in a Marathi newspaper that the NCP chief is understood to have secretly met Modi in New Delhi on that day.
“During State visits or in Chief Ministers conferences in Delhi, I meet CMs and barring these occasions, never met Modi in the last one year,” Pawar, whose party is the second largest constituent of the Congress-led UPA, said in another tweet.
The newspaper report had claimed that the meeting had lasted nearly 30 minutes and that even senior leaders of the NCP and the BJP were not aware of it.
However, reflecting the unease in Congress-NCP ties in Maharashtra and apparently preparing for a tough bargain, Patel said Congress has delayed the seat sharing talks for “far too long” and the party was losing patience.
“It is not a good sign for the simple reason that elections are round the corner and all political parties need clarity on issues. Options for all political parties are open as long as they are very clear,” Patel, a Union minister, told reporters.
“But, we are losing patience because Congress is delaying alliance talks,” he said, adding this was creating confusion.
Patel, a confidante of Pawar, also flayed Congress spokespersons and leaders in Maharashtra for giving “contrary signals” which was not good for the alliance.
He also trashed media reports that Pawar had a meeting with Modi.
“We deny that there has been ever a meeting to discuss any political issues between Mr Sharad Pawar and Mr Narendra Modi as is being claimed in some sections of the media,” he said.
Earlier, in what was interpreted as signs of softening of its stand on Modi, Patel had said on Wednesday that judicial pronouncement on BJP’s prime ministerial nominee in the Gujarat communal riots “out to be respected”.
“We are in an era when we believe that the judicial system is the final recourse to getting justice on any issue or to bring finality to any controversy and if the judicial system has given any pronouncement, we ought to respect it. we will not question it further,” Patel had said.
He was responding to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s attack on Modi in a television interview where he had accused the Gujarat Government of abetting the 2002 riots. (PTI)
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