At Trinamool Meet, Mamata Banerjee's Revealing Comment On Congress

Kolkata: Amid talks of a unified opposition to take on the BJP in 2019, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has again lashed out against the Congress. Talking of the political situation in the state, Ms Banerjee clubbed the Congress with the BJP, the Left and the Maoists, as the "darkest underbelly of society".

"The CPM is falling at the feet of the BJP and clutching at their straws to stay afloat...Congress is opposing BJP in Delhi and holding hands here. Where are the rules, the principles of the Congress? CPM, Congress, Maoists and BJP... they are the darkest underbelly of society," the Trinamool chief said.

A couple of months ago, the Chief Minister had lost her temper when the state Congress accused her Trinamool Congress of unleashing violence ahead of panchayat elections. The Left and the BJP had raised similar complaints and Ms Banerjee had accused them of being in league.

Mamata Banerjee, who once belonged to the Congress and broke away to form her own party, shares a warm rapport with Sonia Gandhi, even though her stance about Congress participation in the united opposition against the BJP in 2019 is fuzzy.

She has regularly sent representatives for the get-togethers called by the Congress - the last being Dinesh Trivedi at Rahul Gandhi's Iftaar party last Thursday. At the recent oath ceremony of HD Kumaraswamy in Karnataka, she was seen hugging Mrs Gandhi. On Sunday, she met senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel during her visit to Delhi.

But she has also kept in touch with leaders like Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who are trying to patch together a non-Congress, non-BJP Federal Front. Her party's unspoken refusal to allow Rahul Gandhi to lead a united opposition against the BJP is not a secret - given her call for a more prominent role for regional parties.

At the state level, the Congress and the TMC are at loggerheads -- an antagonism that has become sharper since the last assembly elections, when the Congress entered an unofficial alliance with the Left Front.

At the party's strategy session ahead of next year's general elections, Ms Banerjee also admitted to corruption and infighting in the party ranks, and asked her leaders to focus on the organisation.