From anti-BJP rally, Mamata trains her guns on INDIA allies, flags rifts over huddles, seat-sharing

On the day of the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee led an all-faith “Sanhati (harmony) rally” in Kolkata, from where she not only launched an attack on the BJP but also went after her INDIA alliance partners.

Mamata slammed the BJP for its bid to “politicise” religion ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

At the same time, she also said she felt sad to see the CPI(M) “controlling” the INDIA bloc’s meetings and that some people would not listen to her over seat-sharing for the upcoming polls.

In the context of Bengal, apart from the TMC, the Congress and the CPI(M) are the other major constituents of the Opposition INDIA grouping formed to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.

The INDIA allies have run into a seat-sharing hurdle in Bengal, with the TMC having declined to engage in talks with the Congress’s national alliance committee over the issue while offering the party just two of its sitting seats – Berhampore and Malda Dakshin.

State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who is also the party MP from Berhampore, has rejected the TMC’s offer, saying the grand old party had won those seats on its own in 2019 fighting against the TMC and the BJP, and that the Congress does not need any “grace or generosity” from Mamata to win them again.

In the 2019 polls, the TMC bagged 22 seats out of the state’s total 42 as against the BJP’s 18, with the CPI(M)-led Left Front drawing a blank.

On her part, Mamata, while addressing a public rally in Park Circus Maidan where the Sanhati rally ended, rued that none of the Opposition leaders hit the streets in protest to counter the BJP head-on, like she did on the day of