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BJP State unit seeks clear stand on Mamata

Special Correspondent

Uncertainty over Trinamool Congress’ future with NDA “creating problems”

KOLKATA: The West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has appealed to the national leadership of the party to take a more definitive stand on the future of ties with the Trinamool Congress, its major National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ally in the State.

“We have appealed to the central leadership to inform us about the position of Mamata Banerjee [in the context of the BJP’s relations with the Trinamool Congress],” general secretary of the BJP State unit, Rahul Sinha, told The Hindu here on Friday.

The uncertainty over the Trinamool Congress’ future in the NDA and Ms. Banerjee’s remarks that her party will have no truck with the BJP in the Panchayat elections likely to be held in May “is creating problems” for the party in the State, Mr. Sinha said.

“We are for an electoral alliance with the Trinamool Congress that continues to remain a partner in the NDA. The absence of such an alliance will only benefit the Communist Party of India (Marxist),” he added.

The Trinamool Congress was absent from a meeting of NDA leaders in New Delhi on January 22.

The Trinamool Congress chief has made it clear that she will not go in for an alliance with the BJP in the rural polls. Neither shall her party have any electoral understanding with the Congress.

“We are not the bonded labour of the Congress and are self-sufficient enough to contest the elections on our own,” Ms. Banerjee said earlier this week.

The State Congress leadership has criticised “the double standards” of Ms. Banerjee.

“While she has been distancing herself from the BJP she continues to remain in the NDA,” general secretary of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, Manas Bhunia, said.

“The Congress had given a call to Ms. Banerjee to join it in the formation of an anti-Left secular, democratic and nationalist front in the State but she refused to disassociate from the BJP,” he recalled.

Dr. Bhunia described as “a hoax” the Progressive Secular Democratic (PSD) Front launched by Ms. Banerjee last month.

The PSD Front that has 17 constituents does not include the Congress and “is the real alternative to the Left Front,” Ms. Banerjee has asserted.

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