Manas Bhuniya and Sonia Gandhi

Calcutta, March 2: State Congress chief Manas Bhuniya will meet Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi over the next week to discuss with the high command the seats the state unit wants to contest in the Assembly polls.

Bhuniya will lead a delegation of around 50 party functionaries to the capital on March 6. The next day, the team will meet Union finance minister Mukherjee and the Congress’s minder in Bengal, K. Keshava Rao. On March 8, the delegation is expected to meet party president Sonia.

The high command will request Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee to leave the identified constituencies for the Congress during seat-sharing talks, expected to begin early next week.

“We must complete our homework before initiating talks with Trinamul. We must identify the seats where we could field our nominees with Mamata’s consent. So, a full-fledged discussion with Bengal leaders is a must,” an AICC leader said from Delhi.

A Trinamul MP said Mamata, who left for Delhi today to participate in the debate on the railway budget in Parliament, was “keen to clinch the deal with the Congress high command by early next week so that she can decide on the seats from which she will field her candidates”. The MP said Mamata “will have to accommodate the SUCI as well”.

Bhuniya’s entourage will include district presidents, state general secretaries and executive committee members, including six vice-presidents. At a news conference today, Bhuniya said the state Congress wanted to contest a third of the total Assembly seats but added the “final decision would be taken by the party president (Sonia)”.

“We have prepared a constituency-wise profile for each of the 33 seats in North 24-Parganas and identified the ones in which we have a chance of winning,” district president Debi Ghosal said.

“In at least 10 Assembly seats, including Basirhat, Baduria, Jagaddal, Kamarhati and Swarupnagar, we have better political consolidation than Trinamul. We will try to impress upon the AICC leadership to bargain for the seats where we are comfortably placed,” Ghosal added.

Central Calcutta district president Pradip Ghosh said he would request the high command to bargain with Mamata “over seats in which we are strong enough to take on the Left”.

“It’s good that we will get an opportunity to interact with Soniaji and Pranabda and tell them about the seats we are willing to contest,” Ghosh said.

Biswaranjan Sarkar, a PCC leader from north Bengal who is part of Bhuniya’s Delhi team, said he would be able to “give a clear picture of our party’s standing in the 54 Assembly seats in the five north Bengal districts”.

A Trinamul general secretary said Mamata was likely to begin the process of choosing her party nominees “soon after she strikes the seat-sharing deal with the Congress”.

“We have already collected the names of possible nominees from our district leaders. Mamatadi will take the final decision on the candidates,” he added.