No Cong– NCP alliance for Navi Mumbai civic polls

The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party will go it alone in the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections to be held on April 11.

The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party will go it alone in the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections to be held on April 11.

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The senior state and Central leadership of both the parties had been insisting on an alliance in keeping with the arrangement for all the other elections.

Both the parties held press conferences on Sunday to announce the break down of talks and to release their list of candidates.

Said Congress leader Subodh Mohite, “The alliance did not happen due to the adamant nature of the local NCP leadership.”

The Congress released a list of 28 candidates while the NCP, 78. Monday is the last day of filing nominations for 89 seats.

Navi Mumbai Congress President Namdeo Bhagat said: “We were ready to contest alone and are confident of doing very well.”

Member of Parliament Sanjeev Naik of the NCP denied the allegation.

“We had agreed to the formula of 67 seats for NCP and 22 for the Congress. We even gave the seats of our sitting corporators including that of the previous mayor as demanded. But they refused to give us one seat that we had asked for our deputy mayor, whose ward has been reserved.”

Refusing to comment on Manekrao Thackarey reported statement blaming Ganesh Naik for break down of talks, Naik’s son Sanjeev said: “Despite the fact that our party workers were against the alliance, Ganesh Naik had accepted the alliance in the larger interest of the party and to ensure the secular vote was not split.”

He added: “Our past performance shows what we are capable of. We are confident of securing a majority in the Corporation on our own.”