No tension with Trinamool: Pranab

KOLKATA - Denying any tension between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Sunday asserted that the two parties will have an alliance in next year’s assembly elections in West Bengal.

“There is no tension in the alliance. There is an alliance between the Congress and Trinamool Congress,” Mukherjee, a senior Congress leader, told newspersons at Burnpur in Burdwan district.

“Last time (2009 Lok Sabha polls) we had fought as an alliance and in the upcoming assembly elections also there will be an alliance,” he added.

Earlier this week, Trinamool chief and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was ready to quit if she could not prove that the state’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) was misusing central security forces sent to three western districts for flushing out the Maoists.

The Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance decimated the CPI-M-led Left Front in last year’s Lok Sabha polls, winning more than two-thirds of the state’s Lok Sabha seats.

But the alliance got jeopardised in the civic polls this year as the two parties failed to clinch a seat-sharing deal.