CALCUTTA, JULY 21: This time around, Mamata Banerjee has made it clear that she wants a piece of the pie in case the BJP-led coalition returns to power. ``The Trinamool Congress will join the government if the BJP and its allies win the Lok Sabha elections,'' she announced at a meet held here today.Addressing a huge party workers' gathering to pay homage to the 13 Youth Congress activists who were killed in police firing on July 21, 1993, the Trinamool Congress leader announced this decision saying that it was for the `well being' of the State.Today's meeting, held just before the elections, assumed a special importance with the Trinamool Congress announcing the names of the party candidates for 27 out 29 seats, leaving two to be decided later.Incidentally, the Trinamool Congress list, which renominated all seven former MPs, Mamata Banerjee from South Calcutta, Ajit Kumar Panja from North East Calcutta, Sudip Bandopadhyaya form North West Calcutta and others, also includes some former bureaucrats,like Mustaq Murshed, a former WB IAS, Tarun Ray, former member of Central Board of Direct Taxes and Bikram Sarkar, former Chairman of the Calcutta Port Trust. Sarkar, who won the election from Howrah last time, has been allotted Mathurapur seat this time.Interestingly, while reading out the list of candidates, which does not include Midnapore, a seat the state BJP wanted to contest, she may have given hints that the seat-adjustment differences between the allies may not be an obstinate problem in this election as it was in the past. However, according to her list of candidates, her party has left 13 LS seats for the state BJP which is insisting on 14.Though Bankura, another seat which the state BJP wanted to field its candidate from, appeared on Mamata's list today, the Trinamool Congress did not take a final decision on the candidate for the seat as yet. On Bankura, she said: ``We have the names of two candidates and we have to select one of them.'' Similarly, she said the name of the candidate forKatwa LS seat will be announced later.Later, flanked by the Lok Sabha candidates, including former bureaucrats, former state president and senior BJP leader Vishnu Kant Shastri and other Trinamool Congress leaders, Mamata rolled out a fierce attack on the CPI(M) and the Congress.Declaring both as the main enemies of her party, she said: ``The opposition Congress in the state has helped the CPI(M)-led Left Front perpetuate it's two-decade-old misrule.''Formally launching the party's political campaign, she said that the LF government had failed to usher in industrial development in the state. ``The number of unemployed in the state has touched a staggering figure of 57 lakh,'' she claimed.Mamata also blamed both the parties for imposing another expensive election on the nation by playing `politics of destabilisation.'Meanwhile, several Youth Congress workers were injured when the police chased them with lathis after a meeting at Salt Lake, from where the YC activists planned to march to ChiefMinister Jyoti Baus's residence to protest the killing of 13 YC workers on this day in 1993.
