Trinamool to go it alone in panchayat polls

Font Size -

Express news service

Posted online: Monday , February 04, 2008 at 12:26:48
Updated: Monday , February 04, 2008 at 12:44:10

Kolkata, February 3 Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee ruled out any alliance with either the BJP or the Congress in the upcoming panchayat elections, and said her party will go it alone in the polls.

Banerjee announced this at a rally organised by Trinamool’s youth cell at Esplanade on Sunday. “When we were with the BJP (2006 Assembly elections), we had bagged 38 per cent votes. But at Balagarh (Assembly by-poll held on December 29 last year), where we fought independently, we got 40 per cent votes. This proves we do not need an alliance,” Banerjee said.

Taking a dig at the state Congress, Banerjee said, “Those who are saying our decision will lead to a division in the anti-Left votes, are living in a fool’s paradise. The parties who are hobnobbing with the CPM cannot be truly anti-Left. In no circumstances, the Trinamool Congress will side with any party which is close to the CPM.” The Trinamool leader added that only her party was able to fight the Marxists.

On Monday, a meeting of the Trinamool-led 17-party Progressive Democratic Secular Front (PDSF) will be held at Mahajati Sadan.

Meanwhile, reacting to Banerjee’s announcement, state BJP general secretary Rahul Sinha said, “Had there been an alliance between Trinamool and BJP at Balagarh, we would have easily won. She has failed to understand the political pulse and that is why the CPM is winning elections.”

Congress Legislature Party leader Manas Bhuniya on the other hand said: “Though Mamata has said that she will ally with the BJP, she still has not said that she had severed all ties with the NDA. In fact, this is how she wants to attract Muslim votes.”

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.