Cong runs into Mamata wall on seat-sharing

Apparently peeved at the Congress request to withhold the release of the list till March 21 when AICC chairperson Sonia Gandhi is scheduled to return to India from the UK, Banerjee asserted that it would not be possible for her to wait “till then” as the candidates would hardly get any time for campaigning.

“ It’s just impossible to wait till March 21 and I’ve made it clear to the Congress leaders,”  Mamata said. With the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee leaving for New Delhi on Wednesday along with other Congress leaders including Ahmed Patel to discuss the strategy with the other AICC leaders, the firebrand TMC chief was closetted with some of her top aides to chalk out a counter-strategy to exert pressure on the Congress leadership.

Besides teething difference over a couple of Kolkata seats with the Congress, the TMC chief had reportedly run into a wall of resistance while negotiating the names of TMC candidates in some of the North Bengal seats where the Congress enjoys better territorial advantage than TMC.