A day after Union Minister Jairam Ramesh ruled out any electoral alliance with Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress, a senior State Minister on Monday came back hard at the Congress saying his party would keep off both the Congress and the BJP.
lashing out at the Congress, Bengal Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee said, “there is no question of any alliance with the Congress. The Trinamool will keep a distance of 1000 miles from both the Congress and the BJP.”
On what he thought about Ramesh’s statement where he said that the Congress was not thinking in terms of any alliance with the Trinamool which was warming up to the BJP, Mukherjee said “the Trinamool has repeatedly proved that it can win elections on its own. We have already declared our policy of going it alone in the lok Sabha elections and we will stick to our stand.”
He also pooh-pooed Ramesh for his reported “ignorance” of a recent remark by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh where he had said that “in politics all doors remain open” as there were no permanent friend or enemy.
Ramesh had earlier attacked Trinamool for secret connection with the BJP “as can be seen in the case of recently conducted lok Sabha elections in Howrah which is not far from Kolkata.” Incidentally, BJP president Rajnath Singh had on Tuesday said that his party had not received any proposal of alliance from the Trinamool Congress.
Meanwhile, the left Front also lashed out at the Trinamool saying the two parties had been in close touch. CPI(M) leader Md Salim said, “Mamata Banerjee is a natural ally of the BJP but for obvious reasons she cannot spell out publicly. She is currently maintaining a close tie with the BJP as can be seen from the coalition they had formed during the panchayat and civic elections.”