Silchar: While the Trinamool Congress is keen to enter into an electoral alliance with its UPA ally Congress in West Bengal, it has gone its own way in Assam, deciding to fight the poll alone.
The party has already announced its first list of 55 candidates, including former minister Bijit Saikia from Tezpur Assembly seat, and is scheduled to announce a second list soon.
It will contest 12 of the 15 Assembly seats in the Barak valley where there is a sizeable presence of Bengalis, and is confident of winning at least seven of them.
In 2009, Trinamool had sprung a surprise by winning five Assembly seats in Arunachal Pradesh out of 28 seats where it had put up candidates to make inroads in the Northeast for the first time.
The candidates it had fielded in Arunachal comprised mostly those who were denied tickets by the Congress - a fact which is in display in Assam too.
In Manipur, the party had won a by-election from Konthoujam Assembly seat last month defeating a Congress rival after forming an electoral alliance with the BJP.
Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee will campaign for the party in the state and is likely to address five rallies at Silchar and Karimganj, Trinamool general secretary Neelotpal Das said.
