NCP says will stay, but calls for ‘coordination’

Even as senior NCP leader Praful Patel maintained today that his party would "continue to be a part" of the ruling UPA coalition, a breakthrough continued to elude the Congress and its longstanding ally.

Sources said the NCP is now in conversation with other UPA allies like the Trinamool Congress and DMK to bring pressure on the Congress to concede more space to its coalition partners. There is a strong convergence of views among UPA partners on this matter, the sources said.

The sources pointed to the statement by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata today — that she was willing go without the Congress in the state, and would stay in the UPA only till her party was given respect — as an outcome of these talks.

The DMK too has been in touch with the NCP. DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi visited Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar at home the day after he raised these issues in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. DMK MP T R Baalu too has met the NCP chief in recent days.

In his meetings with the PM and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Pawar is learnt to have raised the issue of the treatment meted out to Kanimozhi in the aftermath of her arrest in the 2G case. Its clout lessened considerably by the spectrum scandal and defeat in the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, the DMK is learnt to have told the NCP that it feels "isolated" but can do little to address it. The DMK currently has no heavyweight in the government except M K Alagiri, who is sometimes unable to communicate the party's position effectively.

Ahmed Patel, political secretary to the Congress president, had a meeting with Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel late on Friday night. The Congress sought to convey its desire for an amicable resolution; the NCP underlined that the nature of the relationship has now come to be linked with the question of its political survival.

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