New Delhi: Amid talk of NCP giving mixed signals on its alliance with Congress for Lok Sabha polls, BJP on Friday denied that there had been any meeting between Sharad Pawar and party leader Narendra Modi even as it dismissed any speculation of a likely tie up.
"As far as my knowledge goes, there was no meeting between the two," BJP President Rajnath Singh told reporters when asked to respond to talk that Pawar and Modi had met in Delhi recently. The BJP chief replied in the negative when asked if the party was working on an alliance or any kind of electoral understanding with NC.
"There is no talk of an alliance with NCP," Singh said. NCP today sent out conflicting signals on the issue of its alliance for Lok Sabha polls with party chief Pawar rubbishing reports that he had met Modi while senior party leader Praful Patel said that their "options are open".
"News of my meeting with Modi in New Delhi on January 17 appeared in a newspaper. (It) is completely mischievous, baseless & false," Pawar said on twitter.com.
The post followed a front page report in a Marathi daily that the NCP chief had secretly met Modi in New Delhi in the recent past. "During state visits or at Chief Ministers' conferences in Delhi, I meet CMs. Barring these occasions, never met Modi in the last one year," Pawar said.
NCP is the second largest constituent of the Congress-led UPA. The newspaper report had claimed that the meeting between Pawar and Modi had lasted nearly 30 minutes and that even senior leaders of NCP and BJP were not aware of it.
Reflecting the unease in Congress-NCP ties in Maharashtra and apparently preparing for a tough bargain, Patel said Congress had delayed the seat-sharing talks for "far too long" and the party was losing patience.
"It is not a good sign for the simple reason that elections are round the corner and all political parties need clarity on issues. Options for all political parties are open as long as they are very clear," Patel said. "But we are losing patience because Congress is delaying alliance talks," he added.
