Trinamool may review ties with NDA

With opinion and exit polls predicting an increasingly tight contest between the National Democratic Alliance and the Congress-led alliance, the Nationalist Trinamool Congress on Monday said it does not rule out a review of its association with the former on the basis of future developments.

"Strategy may have to be altered if the situation arises," NTC spokesperson and chairman of the party's policy-making body Pankaj Banerjee told mediapersons at the Kolkata Press Club.

Asked whether there was any possibility of the Mamata Banerjee-led NTC leaving the NDA in future as it did in the past, Banerjee avoided a direct reply saying, "What we will  do in future, we will sit in the future and think over. Politics is flexible."

Also Read NDA is losing steam, say exit polls

Banerjee defended the Trinamool's decision to leave the NDA before the state assembly elections in 2001 to forge an electoral alliance with the Congress and subsequently returning to the NDA. "We did so at that time to dislodge the Left Front government from power," he said.

Mamata, the Union Coal Minister, is already unhappy over inclusion of privatisation in coal sector in the NDA manifesto and has dissociated herself from the relevant portion.

Mukherjee, however, denied she is an unpredictable partner pointing to her assertion at elections rallies that only a NDA government headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could provide a stable government.