The senior leader of the Congress, P Chidambaram, says that there is no president of the UPA. (Archive)
New Delhi:
With speculations that Sharad Pawar could become president of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), former cabinet minister and congressional leader P Chidambaram said today that the position is not that of prime minister and even Pawar will not want to be declared as the president of the alliance, since there is no such thing.
“I don’t think that Sharad Pawar wants to be declared president of the UPA … When these parties meet, the natural person extending the invitation and the natural person presiding over the meeting will be the leader of the largest party, we are not selecting a prime minister, “Chidambaram said.
“There is no president of the UPA,” he added.
Underlining the importance of calling a meeting of the UPA parties, the former finance minister said that if the party calls an alliance meeting, “it is natural for a congressional leader to chair the meeting.”
Chidambaram highlighted the importance of UPA and its allies working together to strengthen the alliance across the country.
“Some of the parties may take the initiative to call the UPA meeting and Congress will attend it, but if Congress is calling a meeting, it is natural that one of their own leaders will chair the meeting,” Chidambaram said.
Mr. Chidambaram mentioned that among the UPA allies, Congress had the largest banking force in parliament.
“The UPA is made up of about nine or ten parties and the largest party in the alliance is the Congress party. Congress has about 95 or 100 members in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha,” he added.
Recently, Shiv Sena, a congressional ally in Maharashtra, in his spokesman Saamna praised Sharad Pawar for his personality and said: “Sharad Pawar should become the next president of the United Progressive Alliance.”
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