Cong weighing options on alliance in poll-bound West Bengal

Congress is weighing options in poll-bound West Bengal as to which party would help it check BJP in the next Lok Sabha elections amid growing praise for the Marxists and reservations about ruling Trinamool Congress in the matter.
The AICC is tightlipped over the CPI(M) overtures to join hands to "save" the state from the ruling Trinamool Congress. Former West Bengal chief minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had only three days ago urged the Congress to join hands with the CPI(M).
Congress had contested the last assembly elections in alliance with Mamata Banerjee's party which dislodged the CPI(M)-led Left Front after 34 years.

The two parties, however, parted ways in September 2012 after Trinamool Congress walked out of the UPA-2 government at the Centre.
The Left is hoping that an alliance with the Congress this time around could queer the pitch for the ruling party, which is almost sure to win in the upcoming Assembly elections. The view is shared by a section of the Congress too.
A senior leader said that the touchstone on the alliance issue as to which party would help the Congress stop the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Other consideration is what is the view of the state unit on the issue of tieups.

Mamata's visit to 10 Janpath on December 9 where she greeted Congress president Sonia Gandhi on her birthday, had set off speculation whether the so-called "birthday diplomacy" could signal the coming together of their parties.

Trinamool had been supportive of the Congress on various issues in the last session of Parliament with several in the Congress seeing it as a move by Mamata to keep the Congress away from the Left in West Bengal.
A senior leader, who declined to be identified, said that the Left have been "good allies" at the Centre during the UPA-I as it insisted on implementing a common minimum programme.

As regards Trinamool, the leader recalled that Mamata has shared power at the Centre with the BJP in the past.
"Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal is a different version of Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh," he remarked indicating that both TMC and the Samajwadi Party play communal politics which compliments BJP.
With the West Bengal assembly elections around three months away, a section of state Congress leaders has been harping on the need for an electoral alliance with the Left Front to take on Trinamool Congress.