Congress-TMC strikes pre-poll alliance

The opposition Trinamool Congress and Congress joined hands together on Sunday night to fray the Lok Sabha elections together in West Bengal against the ruling Left Front.

The announcement made on Sunday night hours after TMC swept victory at Bishnupur (West) bypolls, thus ending a period of speculation and anxiety of the growing indifference between the two parties.

“We have decided to jointly contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections,” said External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also the head of the state unit Congress, at a joint press conference with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

The two leaders, however, said the final outline of the alliance, including the number of seats, would be decided shortly in coming days. It will take some sitting again before finalisation of the seat sharing agreement, they said.

The two leaders did not attempt to comment whether it was an alliance or a seat adjustment, except saying the media: “That’s up to you to say.”

When asked on how many seats of the state’s 42 parliamentary seat Congress could fight, the state unit president said, “You will now as soon as we decide.”

About the alliance with Congress, Banerjee said TMC want to fight against the Communist Party of India. So nothing could be better than a Congress-Trinamool tie-up as we want a secular alliance at the Centre. She, in fact, said the Trinamool wanted the alliance to cover the entire state. While Congress said the alliance with TMC in West Bengal was inevitable and it was ready to make more such secular alliances to keep BJP out of power.

On speculation that the Congress had demanded 16 seats while the Trinamool was prepared to give only 12, Trinamool general secretary Mukul Rao indicated that the Congress would focus on bagging winnable constituencies. Fighting on larger number of seats is another crucial thing, but we believe quality and quantity both are needed, he said.

The Congress has already announced that it would not field any candidate against Banerjee in the South Kolkata parliamentary constituency.

On this occasion, Congress’ All India Screening Committee chairman Mukul Wasnik and general secretary of the state K Keshava Rao were among those present during the hastily called meeting at a South Kolkata guesthouse.