Will not concede an inch to opposition: Mamata

Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Sunday asserted that her party would not leave an inch to any opposition candidate in any seat, including Jangipur Lok Sabha constituency where President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit is the Congress candidate.

‘BJP, Congress and CPI(M) are playing got-up matches. But we are not into any such game,’ she said at an election rally in Jangipur in support of party candidate Haji Nurul Islam.

Without once naming the President or his son, Banerjee said, ‘I have not brought Haji Nurul, Indranil (Sen) or Mohammed Ali to play got-up matches here.’

Sen, a new entrant, is pitted against Congress heavyweight and Union Minister Adhir Chowdhury for the Baharampur seat, while Mohammad Ali is the TMC candidate in Murshidabad.

TMC and Congress had fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in an alliance and all these three seats were won by Congress. While Pranab Mukherjee had won the Jangipur seat in 2009, it was won by his son Abhijit in a 2012 bypoll when his father became the President of India.

Nurul is a sitting MP from Basirhat Lok Sabha seat from where he hails, but was shifted this time by TMC to Jangipur leading to murmurs in certain sections. Banerjee, however, asserted on Sunday that Nurul was ‘more than my own brother’ while asking people to vote for him.