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The Trinamool Congress have announced the candidate list for all 42 Lok Sabha seats of West Bengal, dropping at least eight sitting MPs and bringing in several new faces such as former cricketers Yusuf Pathan and Kriti Azad.
The party renominated 16 sitting MPs and fielded 12 women.
Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, whereas Kirti Aazd will fight from the Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency. Shatrughan Sinha will contest from Asansol from where he is the sitting MP.
From the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat, where Sandeshkhali is situated, TMC pitted its former MP Haji Nurul Islam by dropping sitting MP Nusrat Jahan.
The TMC also renominated expelled Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra from Krishnanagar seat for the second consecutive term.
The list was announced from TMC’s mega rally held at Brigade Parada Grounds in Kolkata, where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the party will contest Lok Sabha elections alone in all 42 seats in the state.
Meanwhile, On TMC announcing its candidates on all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, Congress MP and party General Secretary Jairam Ramesh quoted by ANI said , “The Indian National Congress has always maintained that it wants a respectable seat-sharing formula with the TMC in West Bengal. It means mutual negotiations, give and take, some compromise. We have always said that our doors are open for negotiations and seat-sharing talks but there should be no unilateral announcement of the seats, we should do it collectively together as we have done in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Delhi, UP, and so on…The TMC has announced, I don’t know what pressure was there on the TMC but as far as we are concerned we want to strengthen the INDIA alliance in West Bengal…So let’s see what happens.”
