BJP express reservation about Mamata's candidate list

Kolkata, Mar 13 (UNI) Expressing the party's strong reservation about alliance partner Trinamool Congress' decision to dole out 23 seats to them, BJP West Bengal state President Tathagata Roy demanded an immediate re-look into the list.

Sharply reacting to the ''unilateral announcement'' by the chairperson of the West Bengal Democratic Front that 23 seats had been kept reserved for the BJP, even when the discussions about the sharing of seats were not yet completed, BJP West Bengal state President Tathagata Roy and party General Secretary Rahul Sinha told UNI here this evening that they refused to accept the seats allocated to the party.

''In the interest of the electoral unity of the united opposition, we had scaled down from our earlier demand for contesting in 74 seats to 35 seats and then to 14 seats and finally to only eight seats,'' Mr Roy said and regretted that in today's list of 201 candidates, as announced by Ms Banerjee, only two of those eight seats had been given to the BJP despite the party having very good winning prospect in all those (eight) seats.

Stating that in order to decide the party's future course of action the BJP state executive committee was meeting here tomorrow evening to take a final decision on the issue.

Both the leaders, however, refused to spell out whether the party was considering to leave the opposition electoral alliance and decide to field their candidates on their own.

''We fail to understand why such a unilateral step was taken by the Trinamool Congress when they were fully aware of our strong bases in those eight seats,'' Mr Roy questioned and hoped that an acceptable solution could emerge soon.

Both the BJP leaders refused to clarify when asked about any possiblity to quit the opposition alliance if their demands were not met by the Trinamool Congress leader.

Incidentally, earlier in a hurriedly called press conference Ms Banerjee released a list of 201 candidates of the West Bengal Democratic Front, a 13 member opposition coalision including the BJP, for the coming Assembly elections where she kept 23 seats vacant for the BJP. However, only two of the 23 seats are in accordance with the BJP's demand.

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