Pawar-Sonia meet fails to solve Maharashtra tangle

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had a "secret" meeting early last week on seat-sharing between the two parties for the October 13 Maharashtra Assembly polls but apparently it did not help the tough bargaining going on between the two parties.

According to sources, Pawar met Gandhi at her 10, Janpath residence on September 7 for the yet-undisclosed discussions. The Congress chief is understood to have suggested that the NCP president should not "bother" much about the issue given his stature as a senior leader. The parleys are expected to shift to Delhi tomorrow as Pawar is likely to come here from Mumbai.

NCP sources said the bone of contention was the seat sharing in Mumbai having 34 Assembly constituencies while the problem has been sorted out as regards Vidarbha. Two days back Pawar had announced that the seat-sharing arrangement would be finalised in a day or two.

The Congress appears to be in a dilemma over Pawar's suggestion of inclusion of the Vidarbha state issue in the joint manifesto as leaders from rest of Maharashtra, especially from Mumbai and Konkan, feel that such a move will be suicidal for the party in these regions.

These leaders have cautioned the Congress leadership that separate Vidarbha stand by the party would help the Shiv Sena recover the lost ground. The Sena could win only one seat in Mumbai as the Congress swept the megapolis by bagging five seats in the Lok Sabha polls.

Meanwhile, the stage is set for a clash between the ruling Congress-NCP alliance and the Sena-BJP saffron combine, the first major showdown between the Congress and the BJP after the United Progressive Alliance came to power at the Centre.

Both the camps are attaching much importance to the October 13 polls to the 288-member Assembly and leaving no stone unturned in their bid to win the elections. But the presence of the BSP, the SP, the RJD, the LJP and the state-level parties are sure to make the political battle interesting.

Mayawati's BSP, which played a spoilsport in Vidarbha, the traditional stronghold of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, has raked up the statehood issue for the backward region.