Sonia gives go-ahead, Nath to finalise deal with Mamata

Sonia gives go-ahead, Nath to finalise deal with Mamata
SANJIV SINHA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 30: Seat-sharing talks between the Congress and the Trinamool have entered a critical phase with senior AICC general secretary Kamal Nath, West Bengal PCC chief Pranab Mukherjee and other state leaders leaving for Kolkata tonight to present the party's demands to Mamata Bannerjee.

Armed with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's mandate to clinch the seat-sharing deal with the Trinamool even if some sacrifices have to be made by the state unit, Nath, who is leading the negotiations with Mamata, is expected to ``give some and take some'' around a target of 65 to 70 seats for the party in which at least 40 will be ``winnable''.

Nath, who met Sonia again this morning to finalise the party's demands, is likely to engage Mamata in a one-to-one meeting while state leaders will meet her separately to hammer out some kind of a workable arrangement in which the state unit's aspirations are matched with the Trinamool's compulsions.

Before leaving for Kolkata, Nath told reporters: ``The Congress president's direction is to do whatever is necessary in the interest of the Congress workers and the common voters.'' He added the Congress had identified the 40 seats where it felt it was in a position to win the coming Assembly elections while the rest of the seats it was demanding were intended to ensure the party's ``presence'' was spread accross the state.

Nath's visit to Kolkata, his second since seat-sharing negotiations formally began a week ago, came, following Sonia's meeting with senior West Bengal leaders last night where she stressed the need to quickly clinch a ``fair deal'' instead of haggling for the maximum number possible.

Sonia, while sharing the aspirations of her state unit, reportedly took the view that it was more important to put the seat-sharing alliance in place than get bogged down in unrealistic bargaining with the Trinamool .

``Some sacrifices have to be made by the party if it has to fight the Left Front jointly with Mamata,'' was Sonia's missive at the meeting, which, apart from Nath and Mukherjee, was attended by former PCC chief Somen Mitra, party MP P.R. Dasmunshi and CLP leader Atish Sinha. Her tenor reflected clearly that the party's central leadership is willing to ``curb'' the aspirations of its state unit to ensure the alliance with Mamata comes through.

At the ground-level, this could mean that the high command in its proposal to Mamata will peg it demand at the ``realistic and lower level'' of 60 to 65 seats and may also turn down the state unit's insistence that all its sitting MLAs (42) seats should come to it.

Sensing their opportunity, the Congress' state unit has been making unrealistic demands of the Trinamool, some going to the extent of asking for over 100 seats. Nath has, however, claimed that ``winnability'' would be the only criteria for seat-sharing talks with Mamata. All other yardsticks such as retaining all the sitting MLA seats or going in for seats where the party got more than 20 per cent vote in the last Lok Sabha elections were fraught with loop-holes, he asserted.