The Hindu : Trinamool may renew ties with BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 25, 2002

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Other States - West Bengal

Trinamool may renew ties with BJP

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA OCT. 24. The Trinamool Congress, chief Mamata Banerjee, is trying to renew her ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party by way of forging an electoral alliance with it for the panchayat elections scheduled for next year.

Ms. Banerjee had earlier said she would not have any truck with the BJP after it shot down her proposal to review the Eastern Railway bifurcation. However, she moved closer to the State unit of the BJP after its president, Asim Ghosh, was removed from office by the party's central leadership in New Delhi and replaced by Tathagata, brother of Saugata Ray, one of the key functionaries of the Trinamool.

According to observers, Mr. Ray's installation is expected to change the complexion of the Trinamool-BJP relationship in the coming days. The earlier State leadership, led by the Central Minister, Tapan Sikdar, was extremely bitter about Ms. Banerjee, who, too, would spew venom in public about Mr. Sikdar and his followers.

"We would like to have the Trinamool with us in our anti-communist campaigns in Bengal," Mr. Ray said. The Trinamool had begun the exercise of bringing the two parties together before the panchayat polls. As and when the groundwork for an alliance was ready, he would meet Ms. Banerjee to discuss how best it could be utilised to fight the communists, he added.

The CPI(M), leader of the State's ruling Left Front, has criticised Ms. Banerjee's move. "We always knew that she would not sever links with the BJP. It is an unholy alliance,'' Anil Biswas, secretary of the party's Bengal unit, said.

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