Alliance with Congress would have helped: Patil

Nagpur, Feb 4 (UNI) Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader R R Patil today said an alliance with the Congress would have helped his party in the recent civic elections in Maharashtra.

Speaking to newspersons here, Mr Patil said the NCP had made every effort to forge an alliance with the Congress for the civic polls. ''However, we do not want to blame anyone (for the fact that there was no alliance),'' he said.

Taking a dig at the Congress for the severe infighting within the party that led to its debacle in Nagpur, Mr Patil said, ''The Congress should have first ensured an alliance among its own different factions, and then thought of an alliance with us.'' If the Congress had joined hands with the NCP, then it could have swept to power in Nagpur and won at least 40 more seats in Mumbai, he said.

The NCP has accepted the people's verdict, and efforts would now be made to strengthen its organisational set-up in the state, Mr Patil said.

Although it had no alliance with the Congress, the number of NCP councillors had increased at all places in the state, except Nagpur, he said. The party has asked the chiefs of the local units, where elections were held, to submit by tomorrow a report, Mr Patil said.

A meeting would be held in Mumbai tomorrow to analyse the results, he added.

To a question, Mr Patil said that local units had been authorised to decide on alliances for the forthcoming zilla parishad (ZP) polls in Maharashtra. The only condition imposed was that the tie-up should be with ''secular forces'', the deputy chief minister added.

UNI