May 07 2011
Mounting pressure on the Congress- NCP, former MP and Republican Party of India (RPI) leader Ramdas Athawale, who was in political wilderness after his defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, met BJP president Nitin Gadkari on Friday.
The meeting, part of his posturing against the ruling Congress-NCP alliance, follows a similar meeting with Shiv Sena president Bal Thackeray, triggering speculation of a RPI-Sena tieup for the forthcoming civic polls. Athawale is due to meet Thackeray again on Saturday to discuss the proposal of an alliance between the RPI and the Sena- BJP.
“The BJP and Shiv Sena are allies in Maharashtra and we will surely decide on agitating along with a third party and working (with it),” Gadkari told reporters on the occasion. He said he would also discuss the possibility of the saffron alliance joining hands with the RPI to raise “basic issues concerning the people”.
He attacked the Congress-NCP dispensation for paying lip service to the uplift of Dalits and backward sections of society and alleged that the Congress was responsible for creating misunderstandings in the mind of RPI about the saffron alliance. He said the Sena-BJP did not believe in political untouchability.
Athawale said the RPI’s experience of being a Congress ally for two decades was bad and admitted that the third front, of which the RPI is currently part of, lacked political power. He said agitations had been planned on issues like corruption, unemployment, scams, black money being parked in tax havens abroad and farmers’ suicides. He also sought the scrapping of the proposed 9,900-MW nuclear power project at Jaitapur in view of the opposition from the local people.
Athawale said a final decision about the RPI joining hands with the Sena- BJP was yet to be taken. He was accompanied by Dalit leaders like poet Namdeo Dhasal, former minister Pritamkumar Shegaonkar, MLC Sumantrao Gaikwad and Avinash Mahatekar.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment