'MAMATA DESPERATE TO ALLY WITH CONGRESS TO SAVE HOME TURF'

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is “desperate” to have a tie-up with the Congress Party, not to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party at the national level, but to safeguard her home turf from the BJP, say sources close to the leader.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

They say that Mamata’s surprise suggestion at the Opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday, that the alliance should have a face—either as a convener or as a prime ministerial candidate and then her going on to name Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, was part of her wellthought out plan to be on the right side of the Grand Old Party.

Sources say that the Trinamool Congress has repeatedly emphasised that it wanted the seat sharing plan among the I.N.D.I.A. bloc to be finalised by the end of the year, especially in West Bengal. “Mamata knows that the state Congress unit is not eager to tie up with the Trinamool, given the latter’s track-record of weakening the Congress by engineering defections.

That is why she is desperate to curry favour with Kharge, since, in the Congress, the high command’s word is law,” says Prof Biswanath Chakraborty, psephologist and professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata. She knows that only the High Command can overrule the state unit, and command it to toe the line keeping the interests of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc,” he added.