Tuesday, January 27, 2009

CWC to Take Final Call on Cong-SP Truck


A meeting of the Congress Working Committee is scheduled to be held in New Delhi on January 29 to take a final decision on the pre-poll of alliances with Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and finalise strategy for similar arrangements with other ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The meeting will be held in the absence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is recovering from a bypass surgery conducted on Saturday.

Accusing Samajwadi Party of not being serious on the tie-up, the Uttar Pradesh Congress has left the final decision on the alliance to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Though not officially announced, the agenda for the meeting is likely to attempt a thaw in the Congress-SP relations.

SP had earlier unilaterally announced names of 52 candidates out of the 80 seats in the state and the PCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi has urged the party high-command to go it alone in all 80 constituencies, if a final consensus could not be worked out with the SP by January 30.

On Saturday, SP general secretary Amar Singh met Sonia Gandhi but refused to comment on what transpired during the talks.

Senior BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra earlier had a meeting with senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee. Mishra claimed that the meeting was only for conveying "wishes" of UP Chief Minister Mayawati for the speedy recovery to the Prime Minister.

Analysts rule out a pre-poll alliance of any kind between the Congress and the BSP, but add that BSP may consider post-poll support to the Congress if the party contests the UP elections on its own.

(PTI Inputs)

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