Soon after the TMC declared candidates from all Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, the Congress on Sunday said its doors are open for an alliance till the withdrawal of nominations and maintained that any agreement has to be finalised through negotiations and not by unilateral announcements.

Trinamul Congress (TMC) supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a public rally in Calcutta announced the names of 42 candidates for the Lok Saba election in the state.

"Our doors are always open and an alliance can happen anytime before withdrawal," Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said over the development.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also said that the Indian National Congress has repeatedly declared its desire to have a respectable seat-sharing agreement with the TMC in West Bengal.

"The Indian National Congress has always maintained that such an agreement has to be finalised through negotiations and not by unilateral announcements," he said in a post on X.

"The Indian National Congress has always wanted the INDIA group to fight the BJP together," he also said.

Congress and TMC leaders have been engaged in a war of words in the recent past over seat-sharing in West Bengal, with the Mamata Banerjee-led party asserting that it cannot offer more than two seats to the Congress. The Congress has two MPs from West Bengal.

The TMC is part of the INDIA bloc and has stated that the opposition parties are united in the fight against the BJP to defeat it in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

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