Cong in Bengal under threat as rebels plan rally with Trinamool

Cong in Bengal under threat as rebels plan rally with Trinamool
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

KOLKATA, MARCH 2: The already tattered Congress Legislature Party (CLP) is set to receive another major blow as eight of its pro-Trinamool Congress MLAs decided to go ahead with their plan to hold the unity convention without the apparent blessings of the high command.

The decision, seen as a move by the Trinamool to engineer another split in the CLP, is set to further diminish the party's strength in the Assembly. Incidentally, last month 22 Congress MLAs of 52 wrote to the party high command to start a dialogue with the Trinamool for an anti-CPI(M) alliance during the coming Assembly polls

``Our deadline expired and the high command didn't respond to our requests, so we couldn't afford to wait any longer,'' Saugata Roy, leader of the eight rebel MLAs, said here this afternoon. Interestingly, Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee too is expected to attend the unity convention of the rebel CLP men this Sunday.

``There is a technical hurdle for which she may not attend the meeting but we hope to overcome it. Mamata is expected to attend the meeting,'' Roy told this reporter.

The rebels, who represent the rapid erosion of the Congress bases in the state especially before the election, said: ``We learnt that the Pradesh Congress president Pranab Mukherjee has called up Mamata. In case the PCC can downplay its superficial anti-BJP bias and works out a joint strategy with the Trinamool, our effort to make them (the PCC) see reason will succeed.''

``We'll welcome such a move but we could not have waited any more,'' Roy said. The Congress' telephone calls to Mamata only vindicated our stand, the rebels added.

The CLP strength, which came down to 52 MLAs after 22 legislators joined the Trinamool earlier, will come down further to 44. Though officially the Trinamool has only three MLAs, the 22 who crossed over from Congress has pushed it up to 25. Last year, during the Rajya Sabha elections, the party got its candidate elected by engineering cross-voting by the CLP.