Amid fissures in seat sharing, the Trinamool Congress will likely contest the Lok Sabha elections from West Bengal in all 42 constituencies. During a closed-door organisational meeting in TMC’s stronghold Birbhum district, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee urged party leaders to prepare for contesting the polls alone and not to think about seat-sharing talks, PTI reported citing a party source.

“Our party supremo clearly said that we don’t need to think about seat-sharing talks with the Congress. She said that the party had offered two seats to them. But the Congress at times is demanding 10-12 seats,” a senior TMC leader told PTI.

This comes in the backdrop of a rift among INDIA bloc allies at the state level over the sharing of seats. CM Banerjee had criticised the Congress for causing delay in discussing seat sharing in West Bengal, citing “unjustified” demand for 10-12 Lok Sabha constituencies. The TMC is willing to offer only two seats to Congress, given that it has fared better in those constituencies during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Meanwhile, state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a vocal critic of TMC, has been targeting the TMC and Mamata Banerjee over contesting general elections. On Tuesday, Chowdhury called the West Bengal CM an “opportunist”, saying that the Congress would not fight elections at her mercy.

However, senior party leader Rahul Gandhi dismissed Chowdhury’s criticism by saying such comments “won’t matter”, adding that Mamata Banerjee is “very close” to him.

“The negotiations on seat-sharing are underway; I don’t want to comment here. But Mamata Banerjee is very close to me and our party. Sometimes our leaders say something, their leaders say something, and it goes on. It’s a natural thing. Such comments won’t matter and these are not things that are going to disrupt things,” Gandhi said on the sidelines of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.