Even as the Congress on Wednesday made it clear that its alliance with the Trinamul Congress would continue, insiders fear that the latter would not leave more than 50 Assembly seats to the Congress in the big battle to be fought next year in West Bengal.
“Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee would not give us winnable seats when seat sharing negotiations between the Congress-Trinamul will begin in the due course,” they foresee. “The war of nerves has begun, we will have to see who blinks first,” a senior Congress leader said, viewing that Mamata can become a chief minister only if the Congress-Trinamul Congress fight the coming West Bengal Assembly polls together.
The Congress’ strategy would be that the Trinamul Congress cannot form a next government on its own but Mamata would certainly like her party to get a majority while fighting the Assembly elections along with the Congress against the Marxists. The Trinamul Congress might have emerged as number one in the West Bengal civic polls, but it cannot afford to take on the Left, the Congress and the BJP simultaneously in the coming Assembly elections, they felt.
The Congress “first priority” would be rejuvenate the organisation and to introspect as to why the party is unable to get the mileage of the anti-Left wave in the state. It is expected to make some changes at the organisational level, sources said.
The Congress would join a government and will not lend outside support if the two parties defeat the Left in the Assembly elections, they said.
In Tamil Nadu, the DMK has kept the Congress out of power even if the Karunanidhi government is surviving on the support of the Sonia Gandhi-led party. Meanwhile, the Congress played down fighting the civic elections against ally Trinamul Congress, saying that it will have no bearing on the alliance with the Mamata Banerjee-led party at the national level.
While drawing attention to how the Congress and the NCP alliance remained intact both at the national and state level, the AICC officials said the two parties had fought local body elections against each other in Maharashtra despite sharing power in New Delhi and Mumbai for more than ten years.