Work to earn Trinamool's respect, Pranab tells Congress

Kolkata, Dec 31 : West Bengal Pradesh Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee Thursday reminded party leaders that the Congress needed to regain its organisational strength in the state before it could hope to get equal share of respect from alliance partner Trianmool Congress.

"It is a priority of alliance that all parties be treated with equal trust and respect. But respect is not given. It has to be earned," Mukherjee said while addressing a convention of the state Mahila Congress.

"The state Congress alleges that it doesn't get the equal share of respect from its partner. But in order to claim respect, we need to regain our organisational strength in the state so that our alliance partner in West Bengal cannot ignore us," the senior Congress leader, who is also the union finance minister, said.

"We must make the Congress organisationally so powerful that it becomes politically harmful for our ally to ignore us," he added.

Mukherjee, alongside Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee, is one of the main architects of the anti-Left Front alliance in the state.

The Trinammol Congress-Congress combine swept the April-May Lok Sabha polls in the state and is hoping to snatch power in the 2011 assembly elections from the LF, which has been ruling the state uninterruptedly since 1977.

However, Congress leaders like Deepa Dasmunshi have time and again accused the Trinamool of being far from accommodative in seat-sharing talks at various levels.