Thursday, January 5 2006 18:54 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Shillong: Days after returning to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Purno A Sangma today (Jan 05, 2006) projected his party President Sharad Pawar as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha elections saying the other national parties were suffering from 'leadership crisis' and confined within a particular region.

"If you look at the Lok Sabha today, NCP is the only party which has a Prime Ministerial candidate in Sharad Pawar," Sangma, who came back to NCP about a month back, told reporters here.

Analysing the national political trend, the veteran leader said both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were 'facing leadership crisis' with the former 'not improving' its prospects in bigger states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan while the saffron party was on the decline resulting in senior leaders like L K Advani quitting the party President's post.

While the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M) could not come out of its left domain in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, the BSP similarly could not spread its base outside Uttar Pradesh, Sangma said.

Under such circumstances, NCP remained the only party to which people were looking to as the third alternative in the national scenario, he claimed. The NCP was also slowly spreading out in all regions of the country, Sangma added.

The former Speaker said while there were no major differences on economic policies among national parties, foreign policies were based on national consensus. So what mattered most was the leadership issue, he asserted.