From CK Nayak
New Delhi: In a day of fast developments, NCP Ministers including Agatha K Sangma tendered their resignation from the Union Council of Ministers to the party president and abstained from their offices as part of the ongoing turf war with the main coalition partner Congress.
“The party will announce its decision on the next course of action on its relations with the Congress in a day or two,” Praful Patel, Union Minister for Heavy Industries, said after a meeting which took place at the residence of Union Agriculture Minister and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar on Monday.
The meeting discussed in detail issues rocking the relationship with the Congress in Maharashtra as well as at the Centre.
Informing the outcome of the meeting, Patel said that NCP will support UPA till the 2014 elections but the party leaders will abstain from attending any official function.
Agatha’s office in Krishi Bhawan which houses the Rural Development Ministry, wore a deserted look on Monday. Let alone visitors, even most of the staff were absent from office, this correspondent found.
Patel also made it clear that Agatha is very much in the NCP. “She has assured the party leadership that she will abide by the guidelines of the NCP,” he added.
For the past couple of days there were a series of meetings within the NCP and also between senior leaders of both Congress and NCP to resolve the crisis.
NCP had said that it had some serious issues to be resolved with the Congress leadership on coalition matters. “All the three Union Ministers including Pawar have resigned,” a top party source said, while adding “but the resignation letters are with Pawar”.
Meanwhile, NCP MLAs, who arrived here from Meghalaya, held a meeting at Agatha’s official residence, which was followed by a meeting with the leaders from Tribal Peoples’ Forum which had fielded Purno A Sangma as its candidate in the Presidential polls.
It is not known what transpired in the meeting.
Certain complaints were received from the NCP party units in Odisha and Chhattisgarh where it was alleged that Agatha campaigned for Purno during the Presidential polls.
Earlier, Agatha had met Pawar separately.
During the meeting, Agatha told Pawar that she would follow the party line after he and Praful Patel decided to pull out of the government and support it from outside in protest against the way the party was treated by the Congress, party sources said.
Neither Pawar nor any of his ministerial colleagues attended the dinner hosted by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday in honour of outgoing President Pratibha Patil.