The Trinamool Congress and Congress alliance that won the first non Left Lok Sabha Elections in West Bengal in thirty years has broken up for the Kolkata Municipal Elections. The Congress and the Trinamool Congress alliance have determined to go their own way in the KMC elections planned for May 30th.
The KMC elections described as the ‘semifinals’ in Mamata Banerjee’s own words, will see the Trinamool Congress contesting alone as the Congress Party declared a list of their eighty eight candidates today. Mamata Banerjee had earlier declared the Trinamool Congress list of candidates leaving just twenty seven seats for her alliance partner, the Congress party in the 141 seats of the Municipal Corporation.
It can be termed as a major blow to the anti Left alliance that had gained mass support last year in the Lok Sabha elections and was being considered strong enough so as to topple the thirty five year old Left regime in West Bengal in the coming Assembly elections.
Though Mr. Pradip Bhattacharya, the working President of the Congress Party termed the KMC elections as ‘mere local elections. According to him ‘These are local elections and all political parties have their political compulsions’. But this does not mean that our alliance for the political elections as the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha has also broken’.
But this break up comes after a phase of constant deliberations between the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee chief Pranab Mukherjee and the West Bengal In-charge Keshav Rao with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee but could not reach to a settlement.