NCP wakes up to political reality

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), considered a party with a rural base, is waking up to the new political realities of Maharashtra where almost one-third of the members in the next assembly will be elected from urban and semi-urban areas of the state.

Hence, it wants to concentrate on urban areas after its poor performance in recent civic polls.

In the recently held municipal corporation polls, except for Pune and its satellite town of Pimpri-Chinchwad, elsewhere in cities like Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, Nagpur, the NCP fared badly and this has woken up the NCP bosses from their slumber in the state.

In a state where around 40 per cent of the population lives in the urban pockets, the urban populace will now have a larger say in deciding who rules the state. After the delimitation exercise, around 90 MLAs in the 288 members house will now be elected from the urban and semi-urban areas.

In Thane district, a neighboring district of Mumbai, has seen a population explosion in the last 10 to 15 years. In this district, the number of assembly seats will double, from the present 12 to 24 in the next Assembly.

Due to the migration from rural areas to urban areas, it witnessed a rather abnormal growth in population due to which around 35 seats have gone from rural to urban areas.

Speaking to reporters after the first day of NCP's two-day meeting of the state executive committee, state unit president Arun Gujrati said, "Today we tried to analyse the reasons behind our failure in urban areas and decided that the party needs to give much more attention to cities like Mumbai, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik and others.

If this means large scale changes in party organisation at the local level or taking disciplinary action against leaders who indulged in groupism, we will do that, he stressed.

The party will chalk out a programme to widen the party's base in these areas. "We will try to use every moment till 2009 and ensure the party's performance in urban areas is much better than what it was in municipal polls," Gujrati said.