No alliance with Congress in Bengal: Trinamool announces 42 candidates, including Mahua, Yusuf Pathan

New Delhi:  Trinamool Congress on Sunday announced candidates for all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, binning the Congress’ feeble hopes for a last minute alliance with Mamata Banerjee-led party, which was upset with its I.N.D.I.A. ally for its dalliance with the Left parties.

The names of candidates were announced at a public rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground, which saw the omission of seven sitting MPs and surprise candidature of cricketer Yusuf Pathan in Berhampore from where Congress’ Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a vocal Mamata critic, is set to contest.

Trinamool General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee will contest again from his sitting Diamond Harbour seat while Mahua Moitra, who was disqualified from Lok Sabha following cash for query allegations, was fielded from Krishnanagar. Altogether, 12 of the 42 candidates are women.

Trinamool had won 22 out of 42 seats in Lok Sabha elections.

With Trinamool going it alone, Congress is likely to finalise its seat sharing arrangement with the Left Front in Bengal. The CPI(M) Polit Bureau is meeting in Delhi on Monday where the issue of seat sharing with Congress will be decided.

Mamata had in January itself announced that Trinamool will fight all the seats alone, after being upset over the Congress not speedily acting on seat sharing discussions. Trinamool also had said that Adhir was the reason behind the alliance not finding feet though Congress has been maintaining that the negotiations were going on.

Soon after the Trinamool announced its list, Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh posted on X that his party has “repeatedly declared” its desire to have a “respectable” seat-sharing agreement in West Bengal. 

The Congress “has always maintained that such an agreement has to be  finalised through negotiations and not by unilateral announcements…Congress has always wanted the I.N.D.I.A. group to fight the BJP together”, he added.

Senior Trinamool leader Mukul Sangma retorted, "Trinamool has waited enough but Congress announced their candidates for Meghalaya last week without waiting. The problem with Congress is that they are delinked with the ground reality."

Besides sitting MPs Sisir Adhikari and Dibyendu Adhikari, who is closely associated with the BJP, actors Mimi Chakrabarty (Jadavpur) and Nusrat Jahan (Basirhat) were also dropped. Others who were dropped were Aparupa Poddar (Arambagh), CM Jatua and Sunil Mandal (Bardhaman Purba) and Chaudhary Mohan Jatua (Mathurapur).

The party is also fielding three new faces from films in Lok Sabha polls – sitting MLA June Maliah (Medinipur), Saayoni Ghosh (Jadavpur) and Rachana Banerjee (Hooghly). Actors Dev (Ghatal) and Shatabdi Roy (Birbhum) are repeated 

Actor Shatrughnan Sinha will fight again from Asansol while former cricketer Kirti Azad is being fielded from Burdwan-Durgapur. Along with these two, Pathan is the third non-Bengali fielded by the Trinamool.

Senior sitting MPs Sudip Bandhyopadhyay, Saugata Roy, Kakoli Dastidar and Kalyan Banerjee are also fielded again. 

The party has fielded two ministers Partha Bhowmick (Barrackpore) and Biplab Mitra (Balurghat), a former IPS officer Prasun Banerjee (Malda North), a Rajya Sabha MP Prakash Chik Baraik (Alipurduar) and four MLAs Nirmal Rai (Jalpaiguri), Arup Chakraborty (Bankura), June Maliah and Mukut Mani Adhikari (Ranaghat). Adhikari was a BJP MLA but has switched sides.