New Delhi: Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday indicated that the INDIA bloc could accommodate more Opposition parties, including the DMK, and that the question of who should lead the alliance would be decided collectively.
The bloc has since announced a joint campaign against the poll panel and Kumar. Banerjee was speaking a day after attending an INDIA bloc meeting in Delhi, in the wake of the Indian Express’ report on the objections raised by the two election commissioners, where Opposition parties discussed their concerns over the Election Commission and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. In some places they are facing elections. But I am in touch with many parties.
Asked whether parties such as the DMK should join the INDIA bloc, Banerjee said, “These parties have problems at the local level (with the Congress). Banerjee said she had a good relationship with Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief and former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and had recently met DMK leader Kanimozhi. She also said she had spoken to CPI(M) general secretary MA Baby, a political rival of the Trinamool Congress in Bengal, and that he had sent her a letter that she forwarded to the Congress.
He sought to link Banerjee’s recent engagement with the Congress-led INDIA bloc with his call for her return to the party. “As she has taken shelter in the Congress-led INDIA alliance, she should join the party. We have nothing to say. TMC is a separate party now. If Congress wants to come with an official proposal, we will discuss the matter in the party.
In her first press conference in Delhi since the West Bengal assembly elections, in which Trinamool Congress lost power to the BJP, Banerjee also demanded the immediate resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that he had worked to “ensure” the BJP’s victory in the state. She said a “change is required in the electoral framework to safeguard democracy”. In Bengal, we would work under you in Congress,” he said. TMC MP Sougata Roy, however, said the party would consider such a proposal only if it came formally from the Congress leadership. “He (Chowdhury) has said what he felt. The TMC is very much part of the INDIA alliance,” Roy said.
