Mamta fielded cricketer Yusuf Pathan against Congress’s Adhir Ranjan Choudhury
KOLKATA/ NEW DELHI : INDIA Alliance gets another blow Mamata Banerjee’s party Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal has announced candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats…TMC will contest the elections alone. I will bring before you 42 candidates for the 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal,” Banerjee said at the Jana Garjan Sabha in Kolkata before the big reveal.
Banerjee’s nephew and TMC general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, surprised many when he announced the name of former cricketer Yusuf Pathan from Baharampur, which is the bastion of Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. Party leader Mahua Moitra also appears among the candidates from her usual seat of Krishnanagar.
Trinamool Congress today announced candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, snubbing Congress which had just days earlier said that “doors are still open” for seat-sharing talks for the upcoming elections.
The Congress and Trinamool are part of the INDIA bloc – an alliance of opposition parties that had come together to challenge the BJP in the upcoming elections. The snub today is in line with Mamata Banerjee’s declaration that only her party can challenge the BJP in Bengal. The breakdown in talks with Congress over seats was another reason.
Congress and the Trinamool had been trying to figure out a seat-sharing arrangement in Bengal for months, but TMC walked off the table every time the grand old party demanded for than 3 seats in the state. Owing to the tussle, Ms Banerjee did not join the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra passing through Bengal, depriving the INDIA bloc of showcasing optics that would have helped the alliance counter the BJP’s political attacks over underlying conflict within the Opposition front.
The TMC’s list of Lok Sabha candidates focuses on candidates belonging to the scheduled tribe, scheduled caste and adivasi communities besides women, new faces, celebrities and old-time performers. The party renominated 16 sitting MPs and fielded 12 women in the electoral fray.
West Bengal has 42 Lok Sabha seats, of these 32 are unreserved seats, while 10 are reserved for scheduled caste (SC) candidates and 2 are reserved for scheduled tribe (ST) candidates respectively.
Meanwhile, “The Congress has repeatedly declared its desire to have a respectable seat-sharing agreement with the TMC in West Bengal. The Indian National Congress has always maintained that such an agreement has to be finalised through negotiations and not by unilateral announcements,” Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on X (formerly Twitter).
” Congress has always wanted the INDIA group to fight the BJP together,” he added.
“Mamata Banerjee has proven today that none of the political parties of India should trust a leader like her… Mamata Banerjee is in fear that if she continues to be in the INDIA alliance, PM Modi will be unhappy. By separating herself from the INDIA alliance, she has sent a message to the PMO, don’t be unhappy with me, I am not standing to fight against the BJP,” said Mr Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. In Retaining Mahua Moitra As Poll Pick, Trinamool’s Defiant Message To BJP “Outsider” Jibes Return To Trinamool’s Election Campaign Against BJP
In its list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, TMC dropped at least eight sitting MPs and brought in several new faces such as former cricketers Yusuf Pathan and Kirti Azad. Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, a seat which Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has won five times. Fielding a popular figure from Mr Chowdhury’s stronghold is also being seen as Trinamool’s response to his repeated attacks on the party.
From the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat, where Sandeshkhali is situated, Trinamool fielded its former MP Haji Nurul Islam by dropping sitting MP Nusrat Jahan. TMC also re-nominated expelled Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra from Krishnanagar seat for the second consecutive term.
(With Inputs from Shantanu Banerjee, in Kolkata).
