NEW DELHI, MAY 8: The mahajot alliance proposed by the West Bengal unit of the Congress to take on the Left Front Government in the state suffered a setback when the Congress central leadership decided to field a candidate for the coming Panskura Lok Sabha by-election.NSUI state president Subhankar Sarkar will be the party candidate, state unit working president P R Das Munshi announced here. A decision to this effect was taken at a high level meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi had with state unit president Ghani Khan Chowdhury, AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee and Das Munshi here on Sunday night.The state unit has been pressing the central leadership not to field a candidate and to support the trinamool Congress in an effort to defeat the left front. Gurudas Dasgupta, CPI, is the Left Front candidate from Panskura.Meanwhile, Ghani Khan Chowdhury told reporters after the meeting that he had suggested that Congress should not field any candidate from Panskura as the party had no organisational set-up there."Even then if the Congress high command thinks of filing a candidate from there that will be its own decision. In that event we have no role to play,'' he said.Sonia Gandhi reportedly told Chowdhury that if the Congress did not file a candidate from Panskura it would send wrong signals at the national level.
