TMC stresses upon finalising I.N.D.I.A bloc's seat-sharing talks by year-end

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress on Tuesday appeared adamant on setting December 31 as the deadline for finalising the I.N.D.I.A group’s seat sharing exercise, sources said while warning that things could go worse if the deal is not done by then.

At the meeting, sources said Trinamool supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O’Brien to chart out the party’s stand before the top Opposition leaders. She also spoke at the meeting.

Trinamool leaders were clear that I.N.D.I.A leaders have already lost a lot of time but now, they need to speed up. O’Brien is learnt to have suggested on behalf of his party that there should be a 11-party coordination panel at the central level to steer the seat-sharing talks.

Besides Congress and Trinamool, he suggested parties like AAP, DMK, JD(U), SP, RJD, Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP, CPI(M) and JMM be part of this mechanism and meet in the next 12 days to finalise the seat sharing strategy.

The Trinamool leaders also suggested that Congress can fight 300 seats on its own while leaving the others to decide on who will fight where. The idea, sources said, was that the dominant party in a state like Samajwadi Party in UP and AAP in Delhi and Punjab should be in the driving seat.

Almost all parties insisted for an early conclusion of seat sharing exercise though some favoured a little bit of relaxation till January 15 but not later than that. Trinamool sources said the alliance could face trouble and it does not want to be in a stage where they have to say ‘we told you so’.

While Trinamool insisted on a December 31 deadline, Mamata did a wooing act by suggesting that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge could be the Prime Ministerial face or convenor of the grouping. A senior Trinamool leader said, “proposing Kharge name is also a very warm reach-out to the Congress.”

However on Monday when she met a select group of journalists, Mamata described Kharge as a “good man” but made it clear that she was not in favour of projecting a Prime Ministerial face before the polls.

Another point that was discussed in the meeting was conducting public rallies. Sources said CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya suggested that a joint rally be held in Patna on January 30 on Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom anniversary.

Sources said the campaign committee of the bloc has been tasked to soon identify the cities where they can hold rallies, as the leaders decided to hold 8-10 such rallies. Sources said a group of senior leaders is likely to meet on Wednesday evening to draw a plan for holding mass contact programmes.