Mamata Banerjee with I.N.D.I.A alliance partners Sharad Pawar and Mallikarjun Kharge.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress is not likely to offer more than two out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal for Congress in the Lok Sabha alliance though the latter eyes at least half a dozen seats if an alliance works out with the Mamata Banerjee-led party, sources said.
Sources said that while Trinamool has conveyed it to the Congress central leadership about its offer, Bengal leaders, who held a meeting with Congress president Mallikajrun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and other central leaders, said they are willing to forget the acrimony and enter into an alliance if if they get a respectable number of seats.
Bengal Congress leaders want six to eight seats for the party. With Muslims rallying behind the Congress as seen in the last by-polls, Bengal leaders sought to impress upon the national leaders that Trinamool would stand to lose if they ignored the Congress.
Trinamool's argument is that Congress won only two seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha seats out of 20 while it drew a blank in the West Bengal Assembly elections in 2021. Though it won a by-poll recently, its candidate shifted to the Trinamool Congress later.
Congress sources countered it saying it won the two seats fighting alone and they could win it again without anyone else’s help. “The Trinamool Congress should also analyse how many seats it lost last time as there was no alliance. They lost seven to nine seats,” a senior leader told DH.
The leader also said that the final contours of the alliance will be decided ensuring that Congress’ “self-respect remains intact”. The leader added, “we are ready for any tie-up with any I.N.D.I.A partner to the extent possible. The word ‘possible’ is the key word.”
Another leader indicated that Trinamool stand may be “pressure tactics that one sees during negotiations and they may end up giving more seats to the Congress”.
On Monday, Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she is open to having an alliance with the Congress and “someone needs to bell the cat”. She said she was open to discussion.
When told that Congress would be demanding a “respectable number of seats”, she said the Congress had won two seats in the Lok Sabha seats last time and that she is open to discussions.
In Wednesday’s meeting, Bengal Congress leaders told Kharge and Rahul that they are open to an alliance with Trinamool and they could negotiate.
If an alliance works out, it will break the existing arrangement between Congress and the Left Front in the state. CPI(M) and other Left parties have made it clear that they would not join hands with the Trinamool in the state though they may not be averse to cooperating with it at the national level. However, they are likely to keep it to a minimum.
An alliance with the Left would also be detrimental for the Trinamool as there is a fear that anti-Mamata votes in the Left bloc are likely to shift to BJP.