File photo of NCP's Praful Patel
Putting pressure on ally Congress over the deadlock regarding seat sharing for the Maharashtra Assembly polls, the NCP has said a meeting of its core committee in Mumbai on Monday will take a final call on the matter even as it asserted that it is sticking to its "original demand".
"No new proposal has been received by the party. We stand by our original demand for 144 Assembly seats. Time is of the essence as the election process has already begun," senior NCP leader Praful Patel told Press Trust of India.
Mr Patel said that the meeting of the NCP Core Committee, which is to be held at around noon on Monday, would take a "final call" on the stalemate.
His statement came even as the Congress looked for ways to end the impasse with leaders from Maharashtra, including Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Manikrao Thakre, holding consultations with some central leaders.
There was no word from the Congress on the way ahead and a section of Maharashtra leaders have been alleging that Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar was the stumbling block in efforts to find a solution.
Mr Patel, the NCP Vice President, had yesterday given the Congress a day to respond on the issue of seat sharing for the October 15 Assembly polls in Maharashtra saying that his party could wait no longer.
"The filing of nominations has begun. We can wait for a day more for Congress' response on our proposal on the quantum of seats," Mr Patel had said, though he had clarified that it was not meant to be an ultimatum.
In New Delhi, Maharashtra Congress chief Manikrao Thakre had yesterday said they have put the ball in the NCP's court and claimed that the Sharad Pawar-led party is yet to give a "positive response" to the former's proposal for seat-sharing.
After a meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) in New Delhi yesterday, he had said that the Congress will have to prepare for all 288 seats in the state if a response from the NCP does not come within a day or two.
The CEC had held deliberations on the selection of candidates for the 174 seats in Maharashtra which the party had contested in the last Assembly polls.
Mr Patel had said yesterday that they "received a proposal that NCP should contest 124 seats, 10 more than what we contested in 2009 polls. We want to clarify that 124 is the number of seats we contested in 2004" and added that the old formula does not apply now after the party got more seats than Congress in Maharashtra in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
In the last Assembly elections, the Congress had contested 174 seats while the NCP had put up 114 candidates.
The Congress and the NCP have shared power in Maharashtra since 1999, soon after Mr Pawar quit the Congress on the issue of party chief Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin.
The NCP has also been part of the Congress-led UPA at the Centre since 2004 and is the second-largest constituent in the opposition alliance.
The talk in the Congress is that while they are ready to give around 128 to 130 seats to the NCP, nothing beyond this is possible.