News

indianexpress: Congress party’s Member of Parliament Suresh Kalmadi on Sunday made light of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) claims of capturing the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) by declaring that his party had got the largest share of votes at the February 1 civic polls.

“Puneites did not vote overwhelmingly in favour of the NCP. It had to capture power with the support of communal parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena,” Kalmadi said after inaugurating the office of the newly appointed National Students Union of India (NSUI) city chief Yasin Sheikh at the Congress House here.
 
Referring to the NCP chief Sharad Pawar as ‘Senior Baramatikar’, Kalmadi said there was no truth in Pawar’s claim that the pre-poll alliance between the NCP and the Congress fell away because of his (Kalmadi’s) insistence on going alone. “The Baramatikars (Pawar and his nephew Ajit) never spoke to us before the civic elections so there was no question of forming an alliance with them,” he said.

Kalmadi said, with a touch of irony, the ‘Pune pattern’ (NCP-BJP-Sena alliance) had raised Pune’s status in the country. “The pattern is being discussed across the length and breadth of the country,” he added.

He reiterated the charge that the Pune pattern was worked out during the PMC standing committee elections a couple of years before the civic polls, when the NCP — despite an alliance with the Congress — worked against its candidate in alliance with the saffron forces.

He also referred to the NCP’s support for the Sena in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and said the saffron parties had merely reciprocated in Pune. “All of them (NCP-BJP-Sena) now promise to work together for Pune’s development. Puneites will not be taken in by such theaterics,” he said.