‘Consider alliance with the Left...’

Kolkata: Following Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee’s declaration on Friday that her party will fight to win all 42 seats, leaders of West Bengal Pradesh Congress are learnt to have approached their high command in reconsidering an alliance with the Left in Bengal.

Banerjee’s meeting with her Murshidabad district leaders seems to have sent certain indirect but clear messages to the Congress with whom the seat-sharing talks have been on the slow burn due to certain differences. On Friday, Mamata is learnt to have told her party members that TMC aims to win all 42 seats which indicates that her party will field candidates in all the seats. This apparently ends the possibility of a seat sharing with Congress in Bengal.

The TMC supremo also instructed her party’s Murshidabad leader that state Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is no factor there and that her party workers must do all they can to ensure victory. This has rubbed state Congress leaders the wrong way who are learnt to have conveyed to their party high command of Mamata’s repeated attempts to allegedly belittle the grand old party. Congress spokesperson Soumya Aich Roy told the media that Mamata Banerjee should contest from Murshidabad to check whether Adhi Ranjan Chowdhury is a relevant factor there.

In such a context, sources said that Bengal Congress unit leaders have asked the top leadership to reconsider its request to instead ally with the Left in the state

before it’s too late since the polls are a few months away and the party is yet to formally come out with its campaign blueprint.