But it is the victory in Kolkata which is expected to be the icing on the cake, a huge morale booster for the alliance because of the city's importance. It will also set the trend for next year's assembly elections, which the combination expects to win. Yet, now, the script will have to be rewritten since the chances of the two parties capturing the KMC are not rated very high as they have fallen apart. The communists, therefore, can look forward to the contest with greater hope than before.

There is little doubt that the reason why the alliance has run into trouble is Mamata Banerjee's hubris. Always known as a headstrong and temperamental person, she evidently wants to run the alliance like she runs her own party - as a one-person show. Her latest go-it-alone stance has disproved the belief that she has mellowed in recent months because of the possibility of dislodging the Left in the assembly elections and becoming the chief minister herself.

It was expected, therefore, that she would take considerable care to take the Congress along as a partner in the municipal polls, and especially in Kolkata, to create a favourable climate for the two parties before next year's big battle. But her old habit of dictating terms has let her down. She does not seem to have realized that her courage and feistiness, which were her assets during the prolonged confrontation with the Marxists, can become a liability when dealing with friends.

Seat-sharing, of course, can pose problems even within a party, especially when the political climate is encouraging. The cracks in the Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance would not have been surprising, therefore, even if Mamata Banerjee had been a more amiable person. In this case, however, it is not only the Trinamool Congress president who is known to be combative, the No. 1 person in the Congress, Pranab Mukherjee, too, is no less haughty. Besides, it is no secret that they are not particularly fond of one another.

The root of their lack of rapport lies in their past history. It is known that Mamata Banerjee was virtually hounded out of the Congress in West Bengal because none of its leaders, of which Mukherjee was one along with A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chaudhury, could accept her assertive and individualistic ways. But these very stalwarts, and their followers like Somen Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and others, looked on with awe and envy as Mamata Banerjee virtually took on the Marxists single-handedly and established herself as a major political force in the state, putting the Congress very much in the shade.

Since then, all election results have shown that it is her party which is regarded as the “real” Congress. In the last assembly election, for instance, the Trinamool secured 26.34 per cent of the votes and the Congress 14.91. Their total of 41.25 per cent was a neat division of the 35-40 per cent votes which the undivided Congress generally received.

In the previous KMC polls, the Trinamool won 51 seats and the Congress 12 while the Left got 75. But since the tide has apparently turned in the last four-five years with Mamata Banerjee leading the charge against the comrades, she wasn't willing to give more than 25 seats to the Congress while the latter wanted double the number. The Trinamool's confidence stems from the fact that Left's tally of seats is expected to drop to 22 in the 141-member corporation in accordance with the calculations based on last year's parliamentary polls.

Her anger against the Congress may have also been fuelled by the fact that the latter had teamed up with the CPI(M) last year to capture the Siliguri municipality at the Trinamool's expense. Similar tiffs between the Trinamool Congress and the Congress in other municipalities this time, notably in Murshidabad, seem to have led to the stiffening of Mamata Banerjee's attitude towards her supposed ally in Kolkata.

The Trinamool leader's intention apparently is to humiliate the Congress, which she used to taunt as the CPI(M)'s 'B' team when she was in the NDA. It is also undeniable that she has captured a major portion of the non-Left political space in West Bengal to make the Congress very much a junior partner But to achieve her life's ambition of defeating the Left, she will still need the Congress by her side to avoid an unnecessary splitting of the anti-communist vote. (IPA Service)