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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
MUMBAI, JUNE 8: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar and general secretary P A Sangma declared that the Goa Assembly election was not a referendum on the issue they had raised in the Congress -- that of a person of foreign origin holding high office in India. ``Our issue was not relevant in the Goa polls at all... Goa people were electing a Chief Minister, not the Prime Minister of the country,'' Pawar and Sangma said here today.
In Mumbai for the all-important national convention of the NCP, both leaders expectedly dismissed Congress president Sonia Gandhi's contribution in the election result that gave the Congress a majority in the 40-member Assembly. ``Any credit for the good show should be collective,'' said Pawar, ``since we were all together while finalising the strategy and selecting candidates for the Assembly election.''
The NCP was not in the field but there are a few elected members of the Legislative Assembly who share an affinity with Pawar. Asked about the possibility oftheir joining the NCP now, Pawar merely said, ``Wait and watch''. Both he and Sangma refused to accept that their stand on a person of foreign origin had not washed with the Goa voters; they do not see the Goa result as a failure to reach out. ``We were not there at all,'' they said.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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