Pranab go-ahead for ground level work for tie-up

Kolkata, 9 Feb: West Bengal Congress president Pranab Mukherjee yesterday gave a go-ahead for ground level work for a Congress-Trinamool Congress tie-up ahead of May-June elections to 82 municipalities and a civic body, an exercise seen by many as a 'semi-final' before next year's Assembly elections.

Mukherjee, also Union Finance Minister, who held a nearly three-hour meeting with the state Congress office-bearers during the day, told reporters that many members attending the discussion favoured seat-sharing with Trinamool Congress in muncipal polls but left it to district units to decide on selection of candidates.

Many of those who attended the meeting have expressed the opinion that tie-up for the coming elections to 82 municipalties should be worked out by decentralising the process and leaving it to the district leaderships of the party.

"They have requested that PCC leaders should think about the alliance for the coming polls keeping in mind the ground- level situation obtaining in difrerent municipalities", Mukherjee said.

He said generally in local body elections, the decision on selection of candidates depended on district committees which is finally approved by PCC.

The state Congress working president, Pradip Bhattacherjee, said, "The meeting was to assess our party's strength in different muncipalities and on the basis of that the final decision regarding seat-sharing with Trinamool Congress would be arrived at.

Asked when PCC leaders would talk to the Trinamool Congress chief to finalise seat-sharing, Mukherjee told a questioner "You will come to know when it happens".

Bhattacherjee said of the 141 seats in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), Congress would stake claim to the number of seats it had won in the last election in 2005 and also those where it was placed second.

Similar would be the situation with regard to seat-sharing with Trinamool in the muncipalities, he said.

Mamata Banerjee said here recently that the two parties would fight the coming municipal elections and the assembly polls by forming a tie-up to against CPI(M).

The CPI(M)-led Left Front now controls KMC and a majority of municipalities in the state. In KMC, the LF has 75 seats, Trinamool Congress 46, Congress 17 and BJP 3.

The Left faces a huge challenge in the forthcoming elections to make a turnaround after its defeat in a string of elections last year including the Lok Sabha polls.
 

(PTI)