Trinamool Congress and Congress on Saturday decided to go it alone in Kolkata municipal elections here after their seat-adjustment talks collapsed, apparently to test their respective strength ahead of assembly polls next year.
The finishing touches to their floundering alliance efforts were given by Congress which rejected Trinamool Congress' offer of only 25 of the 141 wards and announced a list of 88 party candidates following green signal from the high command.
Pradesh Congress Working President Pradip Bhattacharya announced the list of 88 nominees, a day after the high drama when presidents of the five district committees of the party had gone on fast at the PCC headquarters here demanding 'honourable terms' for seat-sharing for the May 30 Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls.
The state Congress had claimed 51 wards including the ones where it either came first or second in the last KMC polls held in 2005. Hectic parleys among senior Congress leaders Pranab Mukherjee, AICC General Secretary Keshav Rao and Ahmed Patel, political secretary to AICC chief Sonia Gandhi, yesterday failed to yield to result in a consensus. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee accused the Congress of being responsible for the collapse of the seat-sharing talks.
"The seats offered to them (Congress) by us followed discussions with them. But they have broken it (the understanding)," she said in New Delhi. She said she was not disappointed with the outcome. "Our fight is against CPI(M). We will continue to do it."
In an oblique criticism of Congress, she said her party had alone fought CPI(M) since its inception and no support had been forthcoming during the movements in Nandigram and Singur and the party's taking up the cause of computer graphics teacher Rizwanur Rahman who was killed after marrying a Hindu girl. PTI
