Rejecting Union Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee's call to rejoin the Congress, Nationalist Trinamool
Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said instead it would restructure the party's frontal organisations, including the minority cell.
"Why should they say that their doors are open? Are we beggars? My doors are open for them (the Congressmen) to join my party," Banerjee, who is the lone party representative from West Bengal in the 14th Lok Sabha, told reporters when sought her reaction to Mukherjee's recent statement.
In her first interaction with the media after her party suffered a drubbing in the Lok Sabha election, Banerjee said that the question of her returning to the Congress did not arise.
On the contrary, she said, in West Bengal her party would continue to oppose both the CPI(M) and Congress, which was dependent on the Communist support for 'survival' of the government at the Centre led by it.
Banerjee said her party's morale was not shattered due to the poor showing in the Lok Sabha election.
"Our partymen's morale is not shattered. In fact there would be a vaccum in the opposition in West Bengal with the Congress entering into an entente with the CPI(M). This would be our main propaganda campaign in future," she said.
As part of the party's restructuring, Banerjee brought in Madan Mitra as the head of the party's youth wing replacing Sanjay Buxi.
Buxi's removal came close on the heels of the complaints by the city Mayor and a senior party leader, Subrata Mukherjee, that some partymen, including the former, did not cooperate fully in the recent Lok Sabha election.
In a bid to strengthen the party's minority cell, she appointed the party general secretary, Sultan Ahmed, as its chief replacing the former MP, Akbar Ali Khondokar.
Ahmed is the general secretary of the Kolkata's soccer outfit Mohammedan Sporting Club.
Even as some of her party colleagues fear that immediate fall-out of the party's rout in the Lok Sabha elections could be an exodus of party workers to the rejuvenated Congress, the NTC chief, however, refused to believe and said, "As long as I am there such a question does not arise."
The NTC leader said that Congress, which she had dubbed earlier as the 'B' team of the CPI (M) had now turned into a 'Marxist Congress'.
Mamata, who had earlier said NTC would remain in the NDA, announced that her party state president Subrata Buxi would look into the statements made by one or two party leaders that party's association with the BJP was a 'liability'
"I will look into the complaints made by one or two arty leaders in this regard before deciding anything", Buxi, who was present, said.
She harped on the CPI (M)'s "blatant rigging" which led to her party's debacle.
With all her party colleagues in the 13th Lok Sabha failing to get re-elected, she is alone to represent Trinamool in Parliament from West Bengal. Her only other party MP is P A Sangma, re-elected from Tura, Meghalaya.
