Thanks but no thanks: Cong tells 'extra allies'

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday said it will continue with its allies within the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to form the government after its Lok Sabha election victory.

"First of all, we will sit with our UPA allies. There were some allies who contested elections separately but they have always said that they are with UPA and we have also been saying that UPA is intact," Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi told reporters.

Asked if Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav will be part of UPA, he said, "I am talking about parties and don't want to comment on in it. Mulayam Singh had given us support from outside and now he has to decide what he wants to do."

Though Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) president Ram Vilas Paswan are ministers in the outgoing UPA government, they tied up with the Samajwadi Party, forming a so-called Fourth Front, and fielded candidates against the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They had, however, reiterated time and again that they are with the UPA.

Dwivedi said the mandate showed voters have preferred national parties.

"Somewhere this mandate is more in favour of national parties that are present in every corner of the country and working for every region and every section of society," Dwivedi said while commenting on the performance of the regional parties, many of which are part of the UPA.

"After independence it is for the first time that there was no anti-incumbency factor against a coalition government and it is for the first time that a government has fulfilled all the promises that it had made in its manifesto," he said.

Commerce Minister to CNN-IBN

Twenty-four hours ago, the focus was on managing allies, managing the numerical arithmetic.. However, now the congress is simply not dependent on anyone. So party leaders are now questioning the need to accommodate any old ally who had quit the UPA. “There is no decision to take them, there is no decision not to take them. I think we don't need any more allies because we already have the numbers. The less people we have in alliance the better. We just can't keep adding parties when we don't need the numbers,” Commerce Minister Kamal Nath told CNN-IBN.