TMC will go alone in state for LS polls, says Mamata

 Party accuses Cong of making unreasonable demands, prioritising CPM

PTI, KOLKATA, Jan 24: In a major setback to the opposition INDIA bloc, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday announced that her party has decided to go alone in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

    

“I had given them (Congress) a proposal (on seat-sharing), but they refused it at the outset. Our party has now decided to go alone in Bengal,” Banerjee said amid the seat-negotiation tussle between the Congress and the TMC.

    

The CM also refuted media reports of seat-sharing talks, and asserted that she has not spoken to anyone in the Congress on the issue.

    

“Now, we have decided that there is no relation with the Congress in Bengal,” she said.

   

According to sources, the TMC's offer of two seats to the grand old party based on its 2019 Lok Sabha election performance, triggered tension among them, as the arrangement was deemed insufficient.

   

The CPI(M)-led Left Front, Congress, and the TMC are part of the 28-party INDIA bloc.

   

"Let the Congress fight 300 seats on its own. The regional parties are together and can contest the rest. However, we will not tolerate any interference by them (Congress) in Bengal," she said.

   

The TMC chief had made a similar remark during a recent rally in Kolkata, where she batted for the idea of regional leaders spearheading the fight against the BJP in specific regions, suggesting that Congress independently contest 300 Lok Sabha seats.

    

Expressing unwavering commitment to the opposition alliance, Banerjee said on Wednesday, “At the national level, we, as a part of the INDIA bloc, will decide our strategy after the elections. We will do whatever it takes to defeat the BJP.”

On the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Nyay Yatra, which is scheduled to enter West Bengal on Thursday, she alleged that the Congress did not inform her about the yatra’s itinerary in the state.

"As a gesture of courtesy, did they (Congress) let me know that they are coming to Bengal for the yatra? I am not aware of it," she said.

The yatra, currently in Assam, is set to enter West Bengal through Bakshirhat in Cooch Behar district on January 25. After a two-day recess on January 26-27, it will traverse Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Uttar Dinajpur and Darjeeling before reaching Bihar on January 29.|

It will re-enter West Bengal on January 31 through Malda and travel via Murshidabad, both strongholds of the Congress, before leaving the state on February 1.

Congress state president Adhir Chowdhury, a vocal TMC critic, has maintained that it wouldn't "beg" for seats from Bengal’s ruling party.

In the 2019 elections, TMC had secured 22 seats, Congress won two, and the BJP bagged 18 seats in the state.

The Trinamool Congress had recently abstained from a recent INDIA bloc virtual meeting and emphasised the necessity for Congress to recognise its limitations in Bengal, and permit the TMC to spearhead the state's political battle.

The TMC had previously allied with the Congress in the 2001 assembly polls, the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, and the 2011 assembly polls, leading to the ousting of the CPI(M)-led Left Front government of 34 years.

All the regional parties will stay united and the Opposition front doesn't belong to any single party. We will do whatever it takes to defeat the BJP." 

Leaders of the ruling TMC in West Bengal on Wednesday blamed the Congress for its decision to fight the Lok Sabha elections on its own, maintaining that it was making unreasonable demands in terms of seats and was giving priority to the CPM in the state and at INDIA bloc meetings. 

A senior leader of the party claimed that the Congress was lacking seriousness about the alliance. "We were serious about the INDIA alliance, but the Congress from the very beginning was behaving as if the INDIA alliance was their entity," the TMC leader told news agency PTI, shedding light on why the alliance was called off. He said that the TMC offered two seats to the Congress, based on its 2019 performance, but it demanded 10-12 seats in which it got less than 3 percent votes. 

The Congress won two -- Maldaha Dakshin and Baharampur -- of the state's 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019,recording an overall vote share of5.97 percent in West Bengal. In the2021 Assembly elections, it drew a blank with a vote share of 2.9 percent.

 

The TMC leader emphasised that the initial understanding at the India Bloc meetings was a 1:1 fight against the BJP. "But the Congress was unwilling to follow the formula. They were not ready to share seats where they are strong, but want seats from regional parties from the states where they don't have any presence," he said. 

A third TMC leader PTI spoke to criticised the Congress for giving undue importance to CPM at India Bloc meetings and in West Bengal.

"Be it the INDIA bloc meetings or West Bengal, the Congress is obsessed with the CPM for reasons best known to them. We will not work as per the instructions of the CPM, with whom we had fought for three decades," he said. 

The party supremo had on Monday accused the CPM of trying to control the Opposition bloc's agenda.