Cong-Trinamul Bengal deal may be out today
The Trinamul Congress-Congress seat-sharing arrangement for the coming West Bengal assembly polls is likely to be formally announced on Tuesday with the leaders of the two parties holding hectic parleys on Monday night to reach some kind of consensus.
While the Congress has been demanding that its candidates contest on 98 seats, the Trinamul is willing to give its ally 60 seats, at the most. The West Bengal Assembly has 294 seats and the Congress sees its demand for 98 seats as part of the one-third (for Congress), two-third (for Trinamul) formula which was formulated during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
While Trinamul leader and Union railway minister Mamata Banerjee met senior Congress leader and Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for about 45 minutes on Monday night, she sent her close aide Mukul Roy, who is also minister of state for shipping, to hold seat-sharing discussions with Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Also present at this meeting at Mr Patel’s residence was the president of the Congress party’s West Bengal unit, Manas Bhuniya. The meeting which was held at Mr Patel’s residence began around 8 pm and lasted for nearly an hour-and-a-half.
Trinamul sources indicated that the seat-sharing arrangement will be finalised by Tuesday with Ms Banerjee slated to fly back to Kolkata in the evening and take charge of the upcoming polls now just weeks away.
Earlier on Monday, the issue of seat-sharing as well as the Congress strategy for the polls was discussed between Mr Bhuniya and the party incharge of West Bengal, Shakeel Ahmed. Mr Ahmed was recently appointed party incharge of Bengal, replacing K. Keshava Rao.
On Tuesday, a meeting is scheduled between Mr Ahmed and the heads of the Congress party’s 19 administrative and five organisational districts in West Bengal as part of the party’s poll preparations.
As for Ms Banerjee, she appears confident about routing the Left in the coming polls. “Dekhta hai, Allah ka marzi hai. Insha Allah, hum CPI-M ko hatayenge.”
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