Congress evades comment on NCP merger talks

The Congress party hedged on speculation of a possible merger with its UPA ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, saying both parties have been running a successful coalition in Maharashtra as well as at the centre and that was the "present situation".

The Congress party on Friday hedged on speculation of a possible merger with its UPA ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), saying both parties have been running a successful coalition in Maharashtra as well as at the centre and that was the "present situation".

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"We have been running a successful coalition for 10 years in the state of Maharashtra and for five years in Delhi, this is where the present situation stands," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters when asked about the possibility of the two parties merging.

Speculation about the merger started after senior NCP leader and former Lok Sabha speaker Purno A. Sangma said last week he had apologised to Congress president Sonia Gandhi for raising the issue of her foreign origin a decade ago.

Sangma had, along with Sharad Pawar and Tariq Anwar, parted ways with the Congress on Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin issue in 1999 and formed the NCP.