Kolkata, Jan 24 (UNI) West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday announced that her party has no truck with the I.N.D.I.A bloc and would contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections alone in the state following failed seat adjustment talks with the Congress.
Expressing her dismay with the goings-on in I.N.D.I.A, she claimed that the alliance did not hold any discussion regarding a rally in Bengal though “we are a party in the alliance”.
“Our election and seat sharing proposals have been rejected right from the beginning in the I.N.D.I.A bloc and since then we have decided to go alone in the state in the Parliament poll in 2024,” Banerjee told reporters before leaving for Purba Bardhaman district
“We will contest the elections for Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats on our strength and have no truck with the I.N.D.I.A bloc,” Banerjee said.
She said her party wanted to give two seats to the Congress in the state, but the latter wanted more, which was not acceptable to the TMC.
“We are a secular party and we will fight the BJP alone in West Bengal and for the rest of India it will be discussed after the election is over”, the TMC chairperson said.
Banerjee also slammed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his ‘Bharat Jodo Nay Yatra’, which will enter Bengal Thursday but might skip Kolkata.
“They are scheduled to come to West Bengal but they have no courtesy to inform us even though we are a partner in the bloc ,” the CM said.
She said her party had suggested the Congress put up candidates in around 300 seats and let other regional parties fight in their respective areas of strength.
On Tuesday, Banerjee had complained that the CPI-M, her bete noire, was dictating terms in I.N.D.I.A meetings.
” Whenever we had meetings in the bloc, the CPI (M) would take centre stage and run the meeting which is unacceptable for the TMC,” Banerjee told a meeting.
“We have fought the CPI(M) for 34 years to unseat the party and now holding meeting with that party is not at all possible. The CPI-M had heaped so much insult on me all through,” said the TMCsupremo, who unseated the CPI(M) led Left Front in the state in the 2011 assembly poll.
Earlier, Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had slammed Banerjee for offering only two seats to the Congress, and dubbed her an “opportunist”. The Baharampur MP said the election would not be fought at her mercy.
“The TMC leader was an opportunist; she came to power in 2011, with the mercy of Congress,” Chowdhury said.
during the talks, the Congress had reportedly sought six-eight seats, though the TMC leadership offered two.
The Congress has two MPs – from Baharampur and Malda Dakshin – from West Bengal, which sends 42 members to the Lok Sabha.
