Mamata Banerjee's Audacity Gives Strength To Other INDI Alliance Parties To Sideline Congress, Here's How

After the Trinamool Congress (TMC) announced candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, other INDI Alliance parties too not seem in the mood to compromise for the Congress.

Jammu-Kashmir National Conference's (JKNC) vice president Omar Abdullah reiterated the claim on three Lok Sabha seats of Kashmir, leaving only Jammu's two and Ladakh's one seats for its allies.

"We are not rigid, if we were rigid then we would have declared our candidates on all six seats like Mamata Banerjee. We are not fielding our candidates on 50 per cent of the seats," he said.

Abdullah asked media persons to show any other state where an INDI Alliance party is ready to leave half of the seats for allies. He said that no party is leaving its incumbent seats for the alliance.

"In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee did not leave even those seats for the Congress that the party had won. We are ready to compromise with Congress on three seats," Abdullah added.

On giving a chance to Mehbooba Mufti's People's Democratic Party (PDP), Abdullah said, "If Congress wants to give them a chance, they have three seats of Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh, they can give one of them to PDP."

Similarly, in Bihar, while earlier there were talks of other INDI Alliance parties like Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP getting a Lok Sabha seat, that's not a possibility now.

Now only Mahagathbandhan allies in Bihar are doing seat-sharing talks for the 40 Lok Sabha seats of the state. In the 2019 elections, BJP-led NDA won 39 seats, while the Congress could bag only one.