• Source:JND
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Amid reports of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) planning to contest all 42 seats in West Bengal in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan said that he does not care about this development. The news comes amid several opposition parties that have united under the INDIA Alliance umbrella against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general assembly polls. Mamata Banerjee's TMC will also field candidates in Baharampur, the seat from which Adhir contests.

"I don't care. Our leaders have spoken on the issue. I have reached here fighting and winning elections. I know how to fight and how to win," Adhir said.

TMC said on Saturday that its supremo, Mamata Banerjee, will take the final call on seat sharing with the Congress in West Bengal for the polls. It also asserted that "unjustified bargaining" cannot be done by the state unit of the grand old party.

Based on the 2021 assembly poll results in the state, in which the Congress in alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left Front had fared badly, the Trinamool Congress top leadership offered the grand old party two seats, out of 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal, in the coming general elections, its spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said.

Ghosh added that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in "communication with the INDIA bloc leadership and that nothing has been finalised yet.

Banerjee had on Friday asserted, in a closed-door meeting with the party's leaders in Murshidabad district, that the TMC is ready to independently contest all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state if not given due importance in the INDIA bloc. The state leadership of the Congress, which has been offered two seats by the TMC, is demanding some more constituencies.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) in West Bengal has asserted that its fight was against both the TMC and the BJP in the state. The Congress and the Left could not open their accounts in the 2021 state assembly elections.

(With input from agencies)