ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Mamta spurns Congress tie-up offer

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Trinamul Congress chief Mamta Banerjee has rejected Congress overtures for an alliance in the forthcoming assembly and municipal polls in West Bengal.

Confirming that the Congress was persisting with feelers in this regard, a Trinamul MP, not wishing to be identified, pointed out that Mamta had turned down the proposal sent by the Congress leadership.

"Senior Congress leader Priyaranjan Dasmunshi has been approaching Mamtadi for talks. Though she has rejected the idea, the Congress is persisting in its endeavour," he said.

Senior officials of the All India Congress Committee at the party's Akbar Road headquarters pointed out that the party had "nothing to lose" if a Congress-Trinamul alliance materialised in West Bengal.

"Our party chief Sonia Gandhi has given the green signal to Dasmunshi and others to talk to Mamta. We will keep trying,'' a former Congress MP from West Bengal said

The Congress' anxiety to rope in Trinamul as an ally springs from its perception that it is fast losing ground to Mamta.

Significantly, the Congress chief , through some state partymen, had made behind-the-scene moves to sound out Mamta during her brief West Bengal visit just before the general polls. But the Trinamul chief, sure of her party's growing stature in the Marxist state, spurned the Congress move.

The Trinamul had broken away from the Congress in 1997 with Mamta alleging that the Congress unit in West Bengal was merely a "B team of the CPM."

"Mamtadi has been inundated with requests from West Bengal Congressmen to join their party and the Congress is in no position to dictate terms," said Trinamul MP from Calcutta North West, Sudip Bandopadhyay, referring to Dasmunshi's statement that the Trinamul should shed its " communal " image if the two parties were to jointly combat the CPM in West Bengal.

The ruling NDA alliance, particularly the BJP, is keeping an eye on the developments in West Bengal. A senior BJP vice-president said that the party valued its alliance with the Trinamul Congress and that "the Congress attempts to drive a wedge between us will not succeed."

He pointed out that the Trinamul-BJP alliance had found growing popularity in West Bengal and ''this is choking the Congress at whose expense we have gained political ground in the state."

The BJP leader maintained that the "Mamta-PM channel of communication is always open and despite provocations from the Congress, the BJP-Trinamul alliance in West Bengal will stay intact."

Apart from the Trinamul's rebuff to the Congress, the latter's problems have been aggravated by a battle of wits between its two senior leaders - former West Bengal chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Dasmunshi.

A former Congress Lok Sabha MP pointed out that Ray's "reincarnation" in the state unit has caused much resentment among the younger leaders. "Ray is used to having things his way and does not entertain constructive suggestions from party colleagues. This is a sore point with the Congressmen in West Bengal who have ganged up against Ray to cut him down to size," he pointed out.

He said the general antagonism against Ray had made state partymen rally behind the state Congress chief and former union railway minister, A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, who has been re-elected from the Malda parliamentary constituency.

Tell us what you think of this report