Congress gears up for Lok Sabha elections, seat talks

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Congress leadership has lined up a flurry of meetings to activate its Lok Sabha election preparations and seat-sharing talks with the INDIA bloc allies besides firming up the route programmes of Rahul Gandhi's up-coming North-West yatra, during which he is also expected to announce more «Congress guarantees» as the party's welfarist promises for the LS polls, party sources said.
The AICC's National Alliance Committee has started meetings with various PCC leadership here to take their formal views/ suggestions on possible alliances formula, based on which the leadership will reach out to various INDIA bloc allies for formal seat-sharing negotiations.

It is learnt that when the five-member National Alliance Committee met the West Bengal Congress representative, the state leaders said that for retaining the party's two sitting seats — Berhampore and Malda — the party would not need any prop of alliance as both the seats have been won twice in a row «on the basis of the Congress' own strength.

The assertion of the Bengal Congress leaders coincides with the Trinamool Congress' reported signal that it will at best yield only two seats to the Bengal Congress in the event of an alliance between them. While the state Congress leadership works with an understanding/ alliance with the CPI-M, the Marxists don't figure in Trinamool Congress' scheme of alliance talks.