Friday, June 3 2005 08:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Taking its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by surprise, Trinamool Congress (TC) yesterday (Jun 2, 2004) came out with its own manifesto for coming Kolkata civic polls, avoiding a joint one with ally BJP, which took exception to the move.

Releasing the TC manifesto after the end of the five-year tenure of the present civic board run by TC-BJP combine, TC supremo Mamata Banerjee said BJP could issue its manifesto separately.

The Trinamool move was seen in party circles as an attempt by Mamata to counter the campaign by detractors who had said her continuing association with BJP had led to erosion in Trinamool's minority vote bank as reflected in last year's Lok Sabha poll results.

Shortly afterwards the state BJP reacted. "We have just come to know that our alliance partner Trinamool Congress released its manifesto singly and not jointly with us," the party's state general secretary Rahul Sinha said.

"We are at a loss to understand this because it had been agreed that BJP should provide inputs and Trinamool would draft, finalise and release it as a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) manifesto," he said.

Sinha said BJP would release its own manifesto soon and would not do anything to embitter relations with TC so that Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and its allies, Congress and the breakaway group of Trinamool Congress cannot take advantage.