Mamta Baneerjee discards likely alliance with Cong and BJP

"We will maintain equidistant from the Congress and the BJP in he forthcoming election," said Trinamool Congress Chief Mamta Banerjee while addressing a party workers conference at Rajhat, near Hooghly in West Bengal, alleging Congress betrayed her in the last assembly elections in 2006.

Banerjee completely ruled out any possibility of forming an alliance with the Congress in the wake of forthcoming panchayat election for its treacherous activity.

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She said in 2006 election despite a poll alliance between the two parties, Congress fielded its candidates for 77 seats against the Trinamool Congress in order to defeat her party. But as the burning child dreads the fire, like that she said we have taken precautionary measures by not allying with the Congress in the next election.

To displace CPI (Marxist) from the state, the TC chief came up with the new tactics of dividing the Left vote bank, but at the same time bringing closer Leftists in her newly formed Progressive Secular Democratic Front.

She ruled out any suspicion of hers’ being against Left’s politics while saying, “I am not against any Left politics as we have so many Left allies in our newly-formed PSDF.”

Simultaneously she declared forming any alliance with the BJP or the Congress in the panchayat election was distant reality.

Banerjee condemned CPI (M) policies by saying that while it was trying to form a third front, as a new political alternative at the Centre, in the state it was trying to split the anti-Left vote with the support of the Congress.

No confrontation with TC: Congress

We will avoid any confrontation with the Trinamool Congress, as the party was maintaining distance with the BJP-led NDA,” earlier had said the newly appointed West Bengal PCC chief, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi.

“Mamta Banerjee has championed herself as an anti-CPM leader in West Bengal,” he said after taking office at Bidhan Bhawan.

But he also said that there could not be form any secular and democratic front against the ruling CPM in West Bengal without the Congress.

“Interpretation of secularism cannot be confined to the periphery of a state,” he commented on Mamta Banerjee’s move on to fight the Left Front.

As per the Congress sources, the statement issued by the PCC chief means Dasmunshi want to create political pressure on the ruling CPM and alternatively, Congress might consider an electoral rapprochement with the Trinamool Congress.

Dasmunshi said the party would soon decide on whether to work as an anti-Left force in the state or not before the panchayat elections.