No tie-up with Congress in Bengal, says Mamata Banerjee claiming TMC enough to defeat BJP
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Kolkata/IBNS: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday cleared her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) will fight the 2026 assembly elections alone ruling out any possible tie-up with her INDIA bloc ally Congress.
Mamata, a three-term CM, made the remark at a meeting with her party MLAs ahead of the budget session.
Though she ruled out any alliance with the Congress, Mamata advocated other INDIA allies to remain together to thwart the BJP from coming into power.
Mamata said BJP could not have won in Haryana and Delhi if the two parties had fought together.
"The Congress did not help the AAP in Delhi. In Haryana, the AAP did not help the Congress. So, the BJP has won in both states. Everyone should be together. But the Congress has nothing in Bengal. I will fight alone. We alone are enough," she said as per sources quoted by India Today.
The TMC supremo said this after the BJP uninstalled the powerful Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in the February 5 elections.
After storming back to power after 27 years in Delhi, the buoyant BJP is now aiming to win in West Bengal, the state where it has never won and convincingly defeated by the TMC in 2021.
In response to Mamata's confidence that her party will return to power for the fourth uninterrupted term, Leader of Opposition and BJP strongman Suvendu Adhikari took a dig at the CM claiming her wish won't be fulfilled.
"Her dreams don't always come true... We all have seen what has happened to AAP in Delhi and Naveen Patnaik in Odisha. We will defeat TMC too in 2026," said Adhikari, a former trusted aide of Mamata Banerjee.
In the Delhi assembly elections, the BJP won 48 out of 70 seats dashing Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP's dream for a hattrick in power.
The BJP's massive surge in West Bengal in 2019 Lok Sabha elections was halted in the 2021 assembly elections and 2024 parliamentary polls.
Despite aiming to win over 200 seats, the BJP stopped at 77 in 2021 polls while could only grab 12 parliamentary seats in 2024 despite heavy campaigning by the saffron party's top brass.