Lok Sabha 2024: Trinamool-Congress seat-sharing clash
Disagreements in Bengal over seat-sharing among INDIA alliance partners for the Lok Sabha elections have again become news.
As per reports, at a closed-door meeting of Trinamool Congress’s Murshidabad district unit last Friday, party chairperson Mamata Banerjee asked her leaders to be ready to fight in all three parliamentary constituencies in the district—Baharampur, Murshidabad and Jangipur.
In 2019, Baharampur was won by Adhir Chowdhury of the Congress, who is also the party’s Bengal chief and leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, The other two were won by Trinamool.
The instruction by Mamata Banerjee means that Trinamool will fight against the Congress’s sitting MP, and thus against its partner in the INDIA alliance.
In fact, she said earlier too that her party would contest all 42 seats in Bengal. That comment came in the backdrop of news about the Congress add the CPI(M), opponents of Trinamool at the state level, teaming up against Trinamool.
Not just in Bengal, in Punjab too, the chances of the ruling AAP combining with the Congress in a pre-poll alliance seems not too bright.
The issue of fielding common candidates by the INDIA bloc has been a big issue right from the beginning of the alliance, and if it is not resolved, BJP would have a field day in the general election, and might as well fulfil its promise of winning more than 400 seats.
