The Congress Party has strongly reacted to the Trinamool Congress’ setting aside for the grand old party a meager two parliamentary seats in Bengal.

Saying that “Mamata Banerjee has made her minds clear about what she thought about the INDIA alliance,” Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury on Thursday said his outfit was not begging for seats from the TMC.

“Mamata Banerjee has made her intentions clear by allotting two seats for us which the Congress had won in 2019 without the TMC’s support … so there is nothing new in what they are offering … we are not beggars and had not been begging for seats … it is the TMC which will need our help this time and not the other way round,” he said.

“We will show this time how Congress can win its seats without the help of TMC besides retaining the existing seats with us. We don’t need Mamata Banerjee’s mercy.” he said adding, the TMC would fare miserably in the coming elections.

Incidentally, the Chief Minister had last week said that the TMC would alone fight in Bengal whereas in the rest of the country the Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance would take on the BJP. “Only TMC can take on the BJP in Bengal and set a model for others across the country. No other party can do it.”

In 2019 out of the 42 parliamentary seats from Bengal the TMC had won 22 while the BJP had won 18. The Malda South and Behrampore seats were won by the veteran Congress MPs Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury and Adhir Chowdhury respectively defeating their nearest Trinamool rivals. In both the cases the Congress had a seat adjustment with the Left while the TMC fought independently.

Adhir Chowdhury’s intense reaction comes at a time when the Congress is vertically divided over any kind of alliance with the TMC which has for the past two years been plagued by corruption charges that have seen a number of its senior leaders including ministers, MLAs and district presidents other lesser leaders going to jail. Even its second-in-command and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee who is also the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been grilled several times to explain his role in cattle smuggling and recruitment scams.

The talks for seats at the national level notwithstanding, there has been a tremendous groundswell in the Bengal Congress against any kind of alliance with the TMC which, the grassroots Congress worker allege, single-handedly destroyed the Congress’

organization in the State by either engineering defection in that party or implicating its thousands of workers in false cases.

“How will we face the people of down below … all these years we had been fighting against the TMC … all these years our grassroots workers have been at the receiving end of TMC brutalities … their houses were burnt, there women taken away, there lands snatched and their men forced to flee their houses … and now if the top leadership impose an alliance on us then it would be counterproductive,” PCC leader Kaustav Bagchi had earlier said.