New Delhi: A day after Trinamool Congress said it was prepared to go it alone in the West Bengal assembly elections, ally Congress on Tuesday claimed that Mamata Banerjee's party cannot defeat the Left Front alone.
"We are all for an alliance. But if the 'mahajot' (alliance) is broken, then we cannot be held responsible," PCC chief Manas Bhuiyan said in reaction to senior Trinamool leader Partha Chatterjee's statement on Monday that it was prepared to fight the coming elections alone if the tie-up with Congress did not materialise.
"I had appealed to the Trinamool Congress leadership to jointly fight the CPI-M and the Left, but there has been no response to it from (Trinamool chief) Mamata Banerjee till date," Bhuiyan told reporters.
"If the Left Front has to be defeated, no one can do it alone. If they fight it alone or destroy the alliance, then we cannot defeat the CPI-M. We have to forge an alliance."
Referring to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, he said it was with the support of Congress, that Trinamool got 19 seats.
"Earlier it fought with BJP and got one. The results (of Lok Sabha polls) were due to our sacrifices.
"We gave those seats to them where we were strong. We did not put up candidates against their (Trinamool) stalwarts.
It was because of our efforts and sacrifices that they won," Bhuiyan said.
In the recent municipal polls, he said Congress fought 720 seats and won 337 while Trinamool fought on 1,200 and got 740. "See the percentage of seats won by us and them."
Bhuiyan's remarks came after the two-day Congress Plenary where party MP Deepa Dasmunshi said the tie-up with Trinamool should not be at the expense of the Congress.
"Even after the allies commit mistakes, we still carry them on our shoulders. We give them those seats which are safe and where Congress is strong," Dasmunshi said, adding "we do not want an alliance at the expense of the Congress party."
Bhuiyan and other party leaders from West Bengal had separate meetings with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee during the conference.
Without naming Trinamool, Bhuiyan said Congress was not for "politics of capture or re-capture and area domination by party activists" as also to the "competitive violence" going on in the state.
He said the political resolution, adopted at the Plenary, correctly portrayed the role to be played by Congress activists. The resolution said the necessity of coalition politics at the central level "does not prevent our state level workers from hoping and dreaming of a larger political space wherever they may be, and we, as a party, must be cognisant and supportive of their aspirations".
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