Just when an impression was beginning to gain ground that the two main parties were not able to rustle up pre-poll alliances for the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress on Thursday piped the BJP when it announced a seat-sharing deal with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

More than the arithmetic, the announcement that the Trinamool Congress is now firmly in the UPA camp was expected to give the ruling alliance the much-required fillip that it is moving ahead of the NDA. Under the seat sharing formula, the Congress becomes the junior partner with 14 seats while the Trinamool gets 28 out of the 42 seats in the state.

??We have entered into a seat-sharing pact with the TC with the objective of ending the over thirty years of misrule of the CPI-M, which has shattered the economy of West Bengal. We will contest 14 seats in the state,?? AICC in-charge of West Bengal K Keshav Rao said while making the announcement. Congress would contest Darjeeling, Raiganj, Malda, North Malda, Jaangipur, Behrampur, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri, Burdwan-Durgapur, Bolepur, Purulia, Arambagh, Jhargram and Bankura seats.

Political observers contend the understanding is likely to yield a bonanza for the TC, which only had one seat in the 14th LS, given the hard bargain it drove with the Congress.

Putting its foot down, Mamata Banerjee is believed to have insisted on almost all the ??winnable?? seats in south Bengal, leaving only those seats for the Congress, which are pocket boroughs of the CPI(M). The assessment is that the Congress may not be able to add to its present tally of six in the state. Notwithstanding the uneven division, Congress circles here on Thursday maintained that collectively the UPA would be able to increase its tally substantially in West Bengal.

For the Congress, the announcement of the electoral alliance now paves the way for similar alignments in Maharashtra with the NCP and the RJD and LJP in Bihar. Although the talks with the SP have broken down, party leaders are still expecting that a last minute understanding will emerge that will benefit both parties in Uttar Pradesh.

The positive air in the Congress was in contrast to the uncertainty persisting in the BJP camp after the setback in Orissa, where the BJP walked out of the NDA. Now seat sharing talks with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra have ended in a stalemate. “There are still some issues… I don’t want to add to them,” senior Sena leader Manohar Joshi told reporters in Mumbai.