Congress-Trinamool alliance stands: Pranab

Brushing aside speculations of tension with ally Trinamool Congress, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said the two parties would form an alliance to fight the 2011 Assembly election.

"No, there is no tension. There is an alliance between Congress and Trinamool Congress. In the last Lok Sabha election the parties had fought together after forging an alliance. There will be an alliance in the Assembly polls too," said Mukherjee.

On December 20, Trinamool Congress leader Partho Chattopadhyay threatened to go it alone in the Assembly election next year following former union minister Priyaranjan Das Munshi's wife Deepa's accusation that Mamata Banerjee was running a 'disrespectful' alliance.

However, the next day Banerjee clarified that she had not said her party would contest on its own, but it was for the ally to decide.

"I have not said we will go it alone in the Assembly elections. But, our options are open. We are a regional party, the Congress is the larger party. They have to decide," the railway minister had said.

Deepa Dasmunshi is the Congress MP from Raiganj in West Bengal.

In the last Lok Sabha elections, the seat-sharing between the two parties was largely formalised on Banerjee's terms with Congress getting 14 seats and Trinamool 27. One seat was left to another ally Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist.

The Trinamool has 19 MPs, the Congress 6 and the SUCI one from West Bengal. In the civic elections in June, which was dubbed as a semi-final to next year's Assembly polls, Trinamool inflicted a crushing defeat on the ruling Left Front.

The Congress, which had decided to field candidates in all seats after local leaders objected to seat-distribution formula by Trinamool, put up a disastrous performance.