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Going it alone in the coming Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) today announced candidates in all 42 seats in West Bengal, bringing in 26 new faces including soccer star Baichung Bhutia and Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, head of Trinamool Yuva.
Party supremo Mamata Banerjee also announced candidates for some seats in three other states.
Four sitting MPs were left out of the candidates list while the new faces also included film stars like Moonmoon Sen, matinee idol in Bengali cinema Deb (Dipak Adhikari) and yesteryear star Sandhya Roy apart from sitting MPs Shatabi Roy and Tapas Pal.
Moonmoon Sen, daughter of Suchitra Sen, will be fielded from Bankura Lok Sabha seat while Sugata Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from prestigious Jadavpur constituency replacing suspended party MP Kabir Suman.
Mamata's nephew Abhishek Banerjee would contest from Diamond Harbour seat in South 24-Parganas district. The seat was held by Somen Mitra, a former Congress state unit chief who had joined TMC in 2009 only to quit recently.
Some singers also found place in the list.
The TMC chief said that she had chosen "candidates from all walks of life to give a proper representation to Bengal".
TMC, which had shared seats in alliance with Congress in the 2009 elections, had fought from 27 seats and the latter from 14 seats. It had left one seat to SUCI, a Leftist party opposed to the CPI(M).
Justifying her stand to fight the elections alone, she said, "People have wanted us to go it alone. We are happy that we won't have to see the political faces of the corrupt."
"We hope to win from all seats," Banerjee said. Bhutia, who hails from Namchi in Sikkim, would interestingly fight from Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, which the BJP's Jaswant Singh held with support from the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
Banerjee also announced the names of TMC candidates for two Lok Sabha seats in Tripura, two in Jharkhand and two in Manipur.
Expressing her happiness at the five-phase election announced by the EC, she said, "It will take two months and seven days. But this will give me time to campaign in all places."
