We will go alone in next polls: Trinamool

A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh kept open the possibilities of a re-alliance with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the party on Sunday said it would prefer to fight the next general elections alone.

Trinamool Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien said party supremo Banerjee has given a call to regional parties to come together after the polls to form a government.

“We would prefer to go it alone in the next Lok Saha poll… The people of West Bengal are with us. They have supported us in the 2009 Lok Sabha, 2011 assembly, in the bypolls and the recent Panchayat elections,” he said.

O’Brien said the party had won the zilla parishads in 13 of the 17 districts in the Panchayat polls by taking on the Congress, Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“So sir, thank you, but no, thanks,” he said.

“Mamata Banerjee has already given a call to regional parties to come together after the polls to form a government which will be corruption-free and pro-people,” he said.

The Trinamool and the Congress had contested together the 2009 Lok Sabha and the West Bengal assembly elections two years later.

But the Trinamool parted ways with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government Sep 21, 2012 on a slew of policy issues ranging from allowing foreign investment in multi-brand retail, increase in diesel prices and putting a cap on the availability of subisidised cooking gas cylinders.

-IANS