Mumbai: Alleging that Congress has an
"understanding" with Shiv Sena and BJP, Samajwadi Party (SP)
leader Abu Asim Azmi on Saturday said that his party would not
support the saffron combine in the Brihanmumbai Municipal
Corporation (BMC).
"There seems to be an understanding between Congress
and Shiv Sena that while the Congress-NCP will run the state
government, the saffron parties will govern the Mumbai civic
body," Azmi said in a press conference today.
When asked whether his party, which won nine seats,
out of the 118 in Mumbai, would support the Shiv Sena-BJP
combine, Azmi said, "SP and Shiv Sena are two parallel lines,
which will never meet. Our party will not support Shiv Sena."
The SP MLA held Congress responsible for "eating
into"
his party's votebank. "At some places, we lost by merely 150
votes," Azmi said.
The SP leader said that when he exercised his
franchise on Thursday, he himself had no other option but to
vote for Congress, as SP had not fielded any candidate from
that area. "I did not want to vote for Congress, but I had to,
because I neither wanted to go for Shiv Sena, nor the MNS," he
said.
Congratulating his rival Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra
Navnirman Sena (MNS), which bagged 28 seats in Mumbai, Azmi
said, "Raj has become big with the support of Congress."
PTI
First Published: Saturday, February 18, 2012, 19:50