The Congress has" announced that it will field candidates wherever the BJP contests next month's civic polls in 'West Bengal ... But appearances are chronically deceptive ... The West Bengal Congress is stepping aboard the mahajot - the grand anti-Left alliance cobbled together by Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (which) is an ally of. the BJP and has sworn continued allegiance to the NDA. This makes the Congress an ally of the BJP.

How seriously, then, must one take the Congress's claim of putting up a fight against the BJP ...? Congress spin doctors will undoubtedly insist that ... forging of an "arrangement" with the Trinamool ... does not represent any "direct electoral understanding" with its "communal" ally, the BJP ... Should this reasoning fail to convince, apologists and loyalists are probably working overtime on an alternate line of argument too. Politics at the State and the Centre is propelled by different compulsions today ...

Despite the lexical gymnastics, though, and in spite of the elaborate ruse, the truth is out. Quite simply, the Congress is running with the hare in West Bengal and hunting with the hounds in the rest of the country ... is a  reaffirmation that the party is guided by only one dictum: Power at any cost ... For power, they are willing to tail the prodigal; for power, they will even break bread with the enemy ... The bottomline. is that the party cannot eat its cake and have it too. Honesty demands that the Congress admits that it has allied with the BJP.