Even as she announced here on Thursday that the Trinamool Congress will be forming municipal boards in “at least 50 civic bodies, including several hung ones,” Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee made it clear to the Congress that her party will be calling the shots in case there is an alliance between the two parties.
Addressing a press conference at her Kalighat residence here, Ms. Banerjee asserted that the support of no other political party was “inevitable” for the Trinamool as the latter had won the people's mandate.
Asked about the adjustment contemplated between the two parties in those civic bodies that have received fractured mandates, she said: “In most of the cases of hung verdicts, it is the Trinamool that had left seats to the Congress according to local adjustments. Though a section of the media is misleading people, we will form boards in at least 50 civic bodies with Congress' support and will back the Congress in seven bodies.”
Congress Working Committee member, who is in charge of West Bengal affairs, K. Keshava Rao, sounded confident about the future of the alliance between the two parties and its prospect to rout the Left Front government in the Assembly elections, due in 2011.
Speaking to The Hindu from New Delhi, Mr. Rao said: “There is no re-thinking about the alliance. This election was of a local nature and the absence of the alliance did not have much political significance. But the pending issues will be sorted out and the alliance will defeat the Left Front in the Assembly elections and form the government.”
He added the Congress leadership was in constant touch with Ms. Banerjee over the developments.
Ms. Banerjee said on Tuesday that she had left the option of an alliance with the Congress open and was hopeful of a “grand alliance.”
But in spite of the bonhomie between the two parties, Ms. Banerjee appears to have not forgotten the Pradesh Congress' last-minute decision to forge an alliance with the Left Front in the Siliguri municipality in September 2009.
“An opportunity always precedes an action. The Congress is not able to support the CPI(M) in the hung bodies this time since it does not have an opportunity,” she remarked.
