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No truck with NCP in Meghalaya: Congress

January 08, 2003 23:18 IST

The Congress on Wednesday ruled out any truck with the Nationalist Congress Party for the upcoming assembly election in Meghalaya.

Congress secretary and in-charge of the Northeast, Mani Shankar Aiyar, said in New Delhi: "At present we are in government [in Meghalaya and Maharashtra] with them. The NCP and Congress have announced that they will contest all sixty seats in Meghalaya. We are going to contest against each other and we are confident that the Congress will form the next government in the state."

He said party president Sonia Gandhi had accepted the request of Trinamool Congress chairman in Tripura, Ratan Chakravarty, to re-enter the Congress.

"His [Ratan Chakravorty's] entry follows that of the former chief minister of Tripura, Sudhir Ranjan Majumdar, who had contested on a TMC ticket in the parliamentary by-election of February-March, 2002, and 21 senior TMC leaders, including their vice-president, general secretaries and joint secretaries," he said.

This will lead to a direct contest between the Congress-Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura alliance and the Left Front in the assembly election, he added.

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