Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Monday claimed that the Trinamool Congress was in a sorry state of affairs owing to internal squabbles and that was being reflected in its choice of candidates for the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal.
The TMC announced the names of its candidates for all the 42 seats in the state, leaving no constituency for its INDIA bloc alliance partners, at its mega rally in Kolkata on Sunday. "TMC is in a sorry state of affairs owing to internal squabbles," the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president told reporters at a press conference here.
Claiming that Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is "directionless", the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha said the TMC was having to show off its might through a public meeting which seemed to be more like a corporate show than a political event. "Trinamool Congress' bad condition is getting reflected in its choice of candidates", he said.
The Congress, CPI(M)-led Left Front and the TMC are constituents of the opposition bloc INDIA, which suffered a setback with the ruling party in West Bengal announcing candidates for all 42 seats in the state for the coming Lok Sabha elections. The TMC and the CPI(M) have already expressed strong reservations about having any truck with each other in West Bengal, but the Congress national leadership had kept hopes alive for a seat-sharing arrangement with the TMC in Bengal.
On a question about former cricketer Yousuf Pathan, who hails from Gujarat, being fielded in Baharampur, which Chowdhury has been representing since 1999, the Congress MP said that any citizen has the right to fight the elections in any part of the country. He said that the question is whether the party fielding the candidate has a sound reason for doing so or not.
"The TMC is fielding candidates from outside the state as may be the TMC felt that its local leadership does not have credibility among the people," Chowdhury said. Stating that even Mamata Banerjee can contest elections from any place in the country, Chowdhury said that he, however, wants her to contest the polls against him or nominate someone whose win or loss will be considered as that of hers.
"I challenge Bengal's Didi. Your cadres on your side and the people's blessings on my side, I will see who will win from Baharampur," he said. Chowdhury asserted that he will leave politics if he loses, but wanted a similar promise from the TMC supremo if it happens the other way round.
Chowdhury alleged that by her choice of candidates, party supremo Mamata Banerjee was sending a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that her party would not cross the BJP's path. "I had expressed this apprehension earlier that she will not do anything that will be construed as confrontation against Modi," he said.
Claiming that Modi will be the happiest person if the opposition INDIA alliance breaks down, he alleged that Banerjee would not be interested in doing something that would make the prime minister bitter. The Congress leader also questioned Banerjee's meeting with the prime minister at Raj Bhavan when he was in Kolkata on March one.
Banerjee had described it as a courtesy while maintaining that she took up with Modi the issue of the state's dues among other things.
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