Congress spurns Trinamool offer to contest all seats in Bengal

Kolkata, Mar 15 (UNI) Dashing Trinamool's hopes for last minute adjustment, the Congress in West Bengal today decided to put up candidates in all the 294 constituencies in the coming Assembly elections, asserting that Ms Mamata Banerjee must leave the NDA to pave way for a secular Opposition alliance without the BJP.

'' We will field candidates in all the 294 seats. The Congress cannot go for any seat adjustment involving the BJP. It does not matter that the Trinamool has left 70 seats for us. It has to sever ties with the NDA first, '' West Bengal Pradesh Congress President Pranab Mukherjee told reporters during a PCC Executive meeting.

The Congress decision put an end to all speculation after Ms Banerjee released a list of 201 candidates for the Trinamool-led Gana Front, a conglomerate of 13 parties, leaving 70 seats for the Congress and 23 for its NDA partner, the BJP.

Though the Congress had earlier categorically stated that no alliance with the Trinamool was possible as long as it maintained relation with the BJP, Ms Banerjee expressed hope, while announcing names of candidates on March 13, that the Congress would change its mind for the sake of building up a united Opposition capable of scoring victory over the ruling Left Front.

However, without shutting doors for the Trinamool for good, Mr Mukherjee said it was his party, which was waiting for the Trinamool to quit the NDA at the last moment to make possible an alliance between the two main Opposition parties in the state.

'' We also wanted an alliance with the Trinamool. But we gave a condition that there should be no truck with the BJP. Our party will consider seat adjustment with the Trinamool if it quits the NDA even before the last date for filing nominations, '' he said.

The party's executive today met for a marathon meeting to shortlist candidates and recommend the names to the AICC for final selection tentatively on March22.

Preceded by a meeting of the AICC Screening Committee on March 20, the Central Election Committee is supposed to meet the next day for selection of the nominees for the state.

Besides, Mr Mukherjee, Union Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, veteran MP A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Mr Adhir Chowdhury, MP and PCC Working President Pradip Bhattacharya were among others, who participated in the meeting.

Meanwhile, unhappy with the 'unilateral' move of Ms Banerjee to allocate seats, the BJP today referred the issue to the central leadership to ensure a respectable treatment with the party in seat sharing with the Trinamool.

Though admitting that a difficult situation had cropped up in the relationship between the two parties, BJP state President Tathagata Ray denied that there was any threat to the NDA.

Though Ms Banerjee had allocated 23 seats to the BJP, the party was bitter that it was not given a single seat of its choice. The party had expressed strong reservation against the manner in which Ms Banerjee took decision on allotment of seats when she was having talks with BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley.

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