NEWS
VIEWS
INTERVIEWS
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES '98
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
POLLING BOOTH
INDIA SPEAKS!
YEH HAI INDIA
CHAT

Gujarat Congress leaders flay tie-up with Vaghela

A number of senior Congress leaders including former ministers, a former member of Parliament, and former members of the legislative assembly on Thursday staged a day-long protest sit-in on the premises of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee in Ahmedabad demanding termination of the poll alliance and seat-sharing with the ruling Rashtriya Janata Party for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in the state.

Those who participated in the rally include former ministers Jayanti Kalaria, Mansukh Joshi, Dilip Patel and Ishwarsinh Chawda, former MP Maganbhai Patel and former MLAs Nandkishore Dave, Dahyabhai Bhimani and Shankarsinh Thakore, party sources said.

After the rally, Maganbhai Patel told reporters that if the Congress high command failed to meet the demand to terminate the RJP-Congress alliance by Saturday, January 31, party workers would resort to "self-immolation".

Claiming that many Gujrata Congress leaders, including its president C D Patel, wanted the alliance to be terminated, Maganbhai Patel asked why the Congress should yield half of the 182 Vidhan Sabha seats to the RJP whose president, Shankarsinh Vaghela, had "only money power, but no grass roots organisation or support". He said there was "great discontentment" among Congress workers against the RJP.

Former GPCC general secretaries Jayanti Kalaria and Deepak Babaria also criticised the party leadership, saying the protest had been organised by those who had not even applied for tickets.

"We are fighting to save our party and it is a question of principles. If Vaghela betrayed his own mother party (the BJP), how could we be sure about his loyalty to us?" they added.

Emphasising that the Congress should go it alone as its strength had been proved by the success of Sonia Gandhi's rally in Surat district last week, the party leaders, however, denied any possibility of a split in the Congress over the issue of an alliance with the RJP.

"We will field our own candidates in case the high command did not accept our demand," they said and ruled out any friendly contest with the RJP.

Tell us what you think of this report