Calcutta, Oct. 28: The Congress and Trinamul have reached a pre-poll understanding for the Jhargram municipal elections.

Of the 17 seats in Jhargram, the Trinamul Congress will put up candidates for 10 seats. The Congress will field candidates for five, though it wants one more seat.

Talks on the sixth seat will be held tomorrow. “We are confident that after further discussions, Trinamul will agree to our demand for six seats,” said a Congress leader in Jhargram, where the two sides held a meeting today.

The Trinamul, too, was sure that the “minor hitches” would get sorted out.

Mrigen Maity, the West Midnapore district Trinamul president, said over phone: “We have almost finalised the deal with the Congress for the Jhargram civic board. Some minor hitches are expected to get sorted out by tomorrow.”

Nirmal Ghosh, Maity’s Congress counterpart in Jhargram, said the deal would get the seal once the “six seats we had contested five years ago are given to us”.

The Jhargram municipal poll was discussed yesterday when senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee met the party’s Bengal unit.

The municipalities of Jhargram, Behrampore and Krishnagar as well as the Howrah Municipal Corporation will go to the polls on November 30.

In the sitting municipal board in Jhargram, the Left holds 12 seats. The Trinamul and the Congress have two each (see chart).

The SUCI and the Jharkhand Party (Naren) will put up a candidate each this time.

In Calcutta, a Trinamul leader said the party’s Jhargram unit was asked to “scale down” its demand for seats to expedite the deal.

For the Howrah Municipal Corporation, district Congress leaders will sit for talks with the Trinamul leadership for the third time tomorrow. “We have decided to bring down our seat demand from 34 to 24 in the 50-member Howrah civic board,” said district Congress president Krishna Chandra Chandra.