KOLKATA: West Bengal Congress vice-president Diptiman Ghosh on Friday hinted that the party is open for an alliance with the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress both at the national and the state level.
The development took place at a time when Banerjee apparently seeks to take up a larger role in national politics and is scheduled to visit Delhi next week.
"We will try more for dosti (friendship) and less for kusti (wrestling)," Ghosh said on the possibility of an alliance between the two parties in West Bengal, as the leadership of the two entities are reaching out to each other at the national level to jointly fight the BJP, along with some other opposition parties.
He said that the Congress, being a Gandhian party, will extend its hand again if it is rebuffed once.
He, however, hastened to add: "But how many times?" Ghosh said that the Congress will continue to criticise the TMC government if it finds any lapse on its part.
Reacting to the comment of Ghosh, senior TMC leader Tapas Roy said that any decision on an alliance will depend on party chief Mamata Banerjee and the Congress' Sonia Gandhi.
"It is neither for him (Ghosh) nor me to comment on the issue," Roy said.
The Congress fought the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections in alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the newly-formed ISF.
The Congress, for the first time in the electoral history of the state, could not win a single seat in the assembly elections and could garner only 2.94 per cent of vote share.