Malda, March 17: The Malda district Congress is miffed at the manner in which the Trinamul Congress announced its candidate for the April 12 Karba by-elections without that consulting it, a decision that the party feels has cast a shadow over the formation of an anti-Left alliance before the coming panchayat polls.

In the last Assembly elections, the Congress’s Mahbubul Haque had won the seat and the Trinamul’s Abdul Khalek had polled 5,404 votes. The Congress feels that if the Trinamul desisted from fielding a candidate, the margin of win for the party would be better than what it was in 2005. The CPM has fielded Anjumanara Bibi, who had contested in 2005 too.

In Calcutta, PCC president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi today announced that Asif Mehboob, Haque’s son, will be the party’s candidate for the by-elections. Asif, a student of fine arts in Visva Bharati, is a first-timer in electoral politics.

“It is because of Mamata Banerjee’s whims that the CPM is still in power. On one hand she claims that she will uproot the CPM from Bengal and on the other hand she fields her candidate against our assured seat,” said a senior district Congress leader. He said a decision of this sort ahead of the panchayat polls would create bad blood between the Congress and Trinamul.

The district president of Trinamul, Babla Sarkar, said Mamata did not field a candidate in the Malda Lok Sabha by-elections against the Congress as a mark of respect for the late A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury. “But look what the Congress did in the Rajya Sabha elections. They voted for the CPM candidate. It has been proven that they are the CPM’s B team. After this, how can we join hands for the panchayat polls,” Sarkar said.