It was a mistake to go with Congress in 2011 polls: Mamata

“It was a mistake to go along with the Congress in the 2011 Assembly elections,” West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday.

“Had we not tied up with the Congress we would have won 293 of the 294 seats in the Assembly,” she said, while addressing an election rally at Amtala in the State’s South Parganas district.

Ms. Banerjee whose party is contesting the ongoing panchayat elections on its own strength – the first major polls after the electoral alliance between the Trinamool Congress and the Congress ended in September 2012 — said that she was a member of the Congress in the past but left the party “out of shame.”

“I had left the Congress… as the leaders were working as agents of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Had I not left it, the CPI(M) could never have been removed from power in the State,” she said.

Stating that her party would have won the 2011 Assembly elections even without the Congress, Ms. Banerjee accused the Congress of colluding with the CPI(M) against the Trinamool in the ongoing panchayat polls.

In a scathing attack on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre, she criticised the regular increase in the prices of the petroleum products.

Ms. Banerjee dared the Centre to “unleash all the Central agencies against her,” pointing out that whoever protested against the Centre had to face investigation by these agencies.

“Even if none in the country protests against the policies of the Centre, Mamata Banerjee will raise her voice,” the Trinamool Congress leader, who had given a call for a non-Congress, non-BJP front in the next Lok Sabha elections, said.