Cong has not staked claim to form Uttarakhand govt: Rawat

Dehra Dun, Mar 2 (UNI) Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Harish Rawat today said his party had not staked claim to form the government in the state and the BJP's charge that he had kidnapped two Independents was baseless.

''We did not even called them. On the contrary, they have expressed a desire to meet with me,'' he told reporters here, adding that BJP senior leaders did not allow the media to enter the hotel rooms where the meeting took place.

When asked whether the party would accept the Independents back to the party fold, he said the High Command would be consulted and needful done.

Both the Independents Yashpal Benam and Rajendra Singh Bhandari are Congress rebels who had won the Assembly election after the party denied them ticket. Both were approached by the Bharatiya Janata Party seeking their support as it is short one MLA to form government with only 34 seats on its side out of 69 for which election was held recently. BJP had, the previous night, declared that both of them had agreed to support it.

Mr Rawat even distributed written statement of the MLAs concerned and screened video clippings of the incident in the press conference in which both the MLAs had denied their abduction and support to any of the parties.

Mr Rawat alleged that he was attacked by BJP workers the previous night at a hotel where he had gone to meet the two Independents.

He said he was in the hotel room of the two Independents as they had expressed a desire to meet him. ''However when he was washing in an adjacent room after meeting them suddenly BJP workers armed with guns and other weapons started banging on his door and tried to enter the room by breaking the door. It was an organised attack on me,'' Mr. Rawat alleged.

He maintained that there was no harm in talking to the Independents who had been with Congress since a long time.

When asked whether he had lodged an FIR against the attackers, Mr Rawat said he 'might' do so after consulting his partymen.

UNI