Congress to go it alone in Bihar, UP assembly polls: Shastri

Upbeat after its performance in the Lok Sabha elections, Congress has decided to go it alone in the assembly polls in Bihar slated later this year and also in Uttar Pradesh.

Upbeat after its performance in the Lok Sabha elections, Congress has decided to go it alone in the assembly polls in Bihar slated later this year and also in Uttar Pradesh.

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"We have decided not to enter into an alliance for the assembly polls in Bihar and UP. In UP, our main fight will be with the BSP which has badly messed up things. Samajwadi Party and BJP are not a force anymore," Senior Congress leader and a special invitee to the CWC Anil Shastri told PTI today.

The biggest achievement of the Congress under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi would be installation of its own government in the country's most populous state after more than two decades, he said.

Admitting that the Congress' performance in the recently concluded Jharkhand assembly polls fell far short of expectations, Shastri said, "but we took a principled stand and decided to sit in the opposition. There is no question of the JMM-BJP government lasting its full term."

Shastri said he along with Prithviraj Chavan, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Digvijay Singh had favoured the Congress to go alone in Maharashtra assembly elections, too.

He also advocated job quotas for minorities, Dalits and other backward classes in the private sector in view of the shrinking job opportunities in the public sector.