Calcutta:
The Trinamool Congress today announced candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, in a criticism of the Congress which had said days earlier that seat-sharing talks for the upcoming elections were still on.
The Congress and Trinamool are part of the INDIA bloc – an alliance of opposition parties that had come together to challenge the BJP in the upcoming elections. But today's criticism is a clear indication that the Mamata Banerjee-led party does not want to be associated with the Congress, at least in Bengal.
The Congress hit back soon after Trinamool released the list.
“The Indian National Congress has repeatedly expressed its desire to reach a respectable seat-sharing agreement with the TMC in West Bengal. The Indian National Congress has always maintained that any such agreement should be finalized through negotiations and not through unilateral announcements,” the Congress said. said leader Jairam Ramesh on X (formerly Twitter).
“The Indian National Congress has always wanted the INDIA group to fight together against the BJP,” he added.
The Indian National Congress has repeatedly expressed its desire to enter into a respectable seat-sharing deal with the TMC in West Bengal. The Indian National Congress has always maintained that any such agreement should be finalized through negotiations and not unilateral…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 10, 2024
In the list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, the Trinamool Congress dropped at least eight sitting MPs and brought in several new faces such as former cricketers Yusuf Pathan and Kriti Azad. Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, a seat that Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has won five times. The deployment of a popular figure from the stronghold of Chowdhury is also seen as Trinamool's response to its repeated attacks on the party.
From Basirhat Lok Sabha seat, where Sandeshkhali is located, TMC has targeted its former MP Haji Nurul Islam by dropping sitting MP Nusrat Jahan.
The TMC has also nominated ousted Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra from Krishnanagar seat for the second consecutive term.
Congress and Trinamool had been trying to come up with a seat-sharing arrangement in Bengal for months, but TMC walked away every time the grand old party demanded more than three seats in the state.
As a result of the struggle, Ms Banerjee did not join the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that swept through Bengal, depriving the INDIA bloc of opportunities that would have helped the alliance counter the BJP's political attacks on the to combat underlying conflict within the opposition front.