A day after Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister, ruled out any alliance between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Congress for the 2026 state assembly elections, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut pushed her to continue talking to Congress, whose importance in the INDIA bloc is immense.
Banerjee has come down heavily on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress for the opposition’s defeat in the Delhi and Haryana assembly elections, citing them for the same. TMC will contest the 2026 West Bengal assembly elections alone and will win a two-thirds majority in the 294-seat assembly, she claimed. To her party leaders, she said that the Congress was missing from Bengal, and there were futile alliances in which no one reciprocated support.
TMC has traditionally fought elections unilaterally whenever it has faced the Lok Sabha or Vidhan Sabha; Sanjay Raut acknowledged but urged Banerjee to keep channels of communication open with the Congress in view of its call to be an integral part of the opposition alliance. But he insisted that the wider opposition front must be strengthened through dialogue.
The sources from the meeting of Banerjee said that Banerjee pointed out that AAP had not backed Congress in Haryana, and Congress had not supported AAP in Delhi, and this was not accepted. She also added that such behaviour weakens the collective strength of the opposition and reiterates that Congress has no electoral relevance in West Bengal.
Banerjee also gave an order strictly warning her party members not to let there be any internal factionalism or infighting in TMC. Her hard-line shows that she ultimately wants to force her party to be united in battle and is quite happy to stand on her own in 2026.
Join our whatsapp group for Latest updates
Click Here for Chhattisgarh News
Click Here for Entertainment News