Calcutta, Oct. 10: Mamata Banerjee has agreed to part with the Kalchini Assembly seat for ally Congress after her stubbornness made the national party seek the Left’s support in Siliguri.
The Congress will contest Kalchini in Jalpaiguri and two other seats — Sujapur in Malda and Goalpokhar in North Dinajpur — in the November 7 bypolls to 10 Assembly constituencies. The Trinamul will contest the remaining seven — Belgachhia East, Alipore, Bongaon, Serampore, Contai south, Egra and Rajganj.
“We are happy that Mamataji has ultimately conceded the Kalchini seat to us. The Congress workers were hurt because of Trinamul’s insistence on the north Bengal seat. But all’s well that ends well,” Congress general secretary K. Keshava Rao, who is in charge of Bengal affairs, said over the phone today.
Rao said Kalchini was cleared for the Congress after he spoke to Trinamul general secretary Mukul Roy last night. “We told him that the Congress had fared better than Trinamul in Kalchini in the 2006 Assembly polls and taking this into consideration, the seat should be offered to us. It’s good that Trinamul has woken up to the ground reality vis-à-vis Kalchini,” he said.
A Trinamul general secretary said Mamata wanted to keep the alliance intact and take it forward to the 2011 Assembly polls. “Keeping this in mind, didi did not bargain hard for the seat,” he said.
Party sources said some senior Trinamul leaders told her she should not bargain so hard for one seat, given the Congress’s strength in north Bengal.
Mamata said tonight that her party was capable of contesting all 10 seats. “But we are leaving Kalchini for the Congress because I want everybody to win. We shall contest seven Assembly seats, while the Congress three, including Kalchini,” she said in an interview to STAR Ananda.
For the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress had to give in to the 28-14 seat sharing demand of Mamata, followed by withdrawal of candidates from the Bowbazar and Sealdah seats in the Assembly bypolls.
But in the recent Siliguri civic elections, the Congress did not let go without a fight. It had won 15 seats in the polls and Trinamul 14 as well as the support of an Independent. both wanted the mayor’s chair and sparred for weeks. The Congress then offered Mamata’s party the deputy mayor and the chairperson’s posts, but she stayed adamant. The Congress then sent feelers to the Left seeking its support, and won both the mayor and the chairperson’s posts.
Several Trinamul leaders, including a central minister, had said Mamata’s intransigence had jolted the alliance. “Today we are pointing fingers at the Congress. But as the main Opposition… a gesture to honour an alliance partner could have improved our image,” the minister had said.
In Kalchini, Congress candidate Paban Lakra had polled 47,759 votes against Trinamul’s 5,257 in 2006, though the seat was won by the Left.
Trinamul staked the claim to the seat because Lakra later joined Mamata’s party and became its candidate for the Alipurduar Lok Sabha seat.