If the Congress and the Trinamool Congress alliance in West Bengal is striving to dent the Left in the Lok Sabha elections this time, its hopes are pinned here, in the urban core of greater Kolkata comprising the city and its two adjoining districts of North and South 24 Parganas.

The Trinamool-Congress combination is certain to wrest at least half of these 11 seats if not more. After the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, Mamata Banerjee was the sole flag bearer of her party in this segment, while the Congress did not have any of the 11 seats.

Significantly, the Congress has not been allotted a single seat here, following its seat-sharing agreement with the Trinamool Congress. A section of the Congress leadership agreed to the arrangement rather grudgingly, but later extended support to Mamata following clear directives from the Congress high command to accept whatever she offered.

Though initially hesitant to work for the alliance, Congress workers later shed their opposition and have largely worked together to give the alliance an edge.

Apart from the two seats in Kolkata North and South, the Trinamool Congress is expected to wrest a number of seats in North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts.

As the contest gets more competitive, there are chances of more violence in this phase than the earlier two. In the first and second phase of polling in the state, a total of 15 persons were killed, most of them in Nandigram, including a two-year-old child and the brother of a rape victim.

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