Revolt in Trinamool over seats for Congress entrants

By Malabika Bhattacharya

KOLKATA, MARCH 5. The Railway Minister and the Trinamool Congress leader, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, is having a mutiny on her hands for allotting ticket to the Congress MLAs who have just joined the party to enable them to contest the coming Assembly elections in West Bengal.

According to reports, a large number of Trinamool workers gathered on Sunday in front of Nizam Palace, the Central Government guest house in the city, where Ms. Banerjee is busy finalising the list of candidates and raised slogans protesting her decision to nominate the Congress legislators who crossed over to the Trinamool Congress on Sunday.

The Trinamool leadership is trying to put forward the explanation that the demonstration was organised by the West Bengal ruling communists, in collaboration with the Congress, to disrupt the ticket distribution process.

Trinamool sources said the party had been experiencing convulsions for quite some time over the inclusion of Congress functionaries. Many Trinamool workers who stood by Ms. Banerjee since its inception in 1997 were unhappy on seeing the deserters almost effortlessly getting in and succeeding in grabbing coveted positions in the Trinamool.

The rivalry appears to have taken a new turn with Ms. Banerjee promising seats to seven out of the eight Congress legislators who crossed over to the Trinamool Congress. The eighth, Mr. Debi Shankar Panda, is not contesting the polls as he is unwell.

The relations between the Trinamool and the Congress soured further today with Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, State Congress president, charging Ms. Banerjee with launching a war against the Congress rather than the communists.``She said that she is fighting against the communists but by taking the Congress MLAs into her party she has made clear that her objective is to challenge the Congress,'' he said.

The Congress was seriously considering a one-to-one fight against the leftists in the coming election by entering into seat adjustments with the Trinamool. ``We wanted to put up our candidates against the BJP nominees. But, the Trinamool would not agree. We have our commitments too,'' Mr. Mukherjee said.

Analysts say Ms. Banerjee may have blasted the Congress in public on Sunday for failing to help her give the mahajot or grand alliance a concrete shape but, in private, she has expressed her disappointment. She was looking for either a mahajot with the Congress or an exodus from it which would have prevented the triangular contests in the polls.

Ms. Banerjee was expecting at least 30 Congress MLAs to join her but most of them decided to stay on as Mr. A. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, MP, told them to accept the party's stated position on the BJP.

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