Alliance war

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in no mood to allow a Left-Congress alliance to materialise without putting up a semblance of a fight. "There's no point ganging up; people want a people's alliance," she said at an event in Bardhaman. Some days ago she had said that if the Left parties joined hands with the Congress for the Assembly elections, it would be an "ideology-less alliance" that would reflect the desperation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to return to power.