A word war has erupted within India's ruling United Peoples' Alliance (UPA) over the presidential election scheduled on July 19 which, observers said, could result in the split of the alliance after the polls.

While the largest member of the alliance, the Congress Party, has nominated India's former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee as its nominee for the poll, its second largest ally, the Trinamool Congress,headed by eastern India's state of West Bengal's chief minister Mamata Banerjee has refused to accept him.

Mukherjee has even described Banerjee as his "younger sister" but Banerjee stuck to her ground and named three others as her choice.

As all efforts to reconcile the two leaders failed, India's HRD minister Kapil Sibal was sent as UPA chairperson and emissary of Congress President Sonia Gandhi's to convince Banerjee to support Mukherjee.

However, Sibal also failed and within half an hour, Sibal and India's

Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who had also come to this state capital of West Bengal to campaign for Mukherjee, lambasted the state government and expressed concerns over what they termed as "the culture of political violence and murders" in the state even citing figures.

Asked about the Trinamool Congress which is against the choice of Mukherjee, Chidambaram said this would not matter since Mukherjee,Banerjee's mentor, has "65 percent support of the electoral college and will be our next President."

As a major party in UPA, the Trinamool Congress held an important ministry like the railways and had six other junior ministers in the Union cabinet.

Any angry Banerjee immediately shot back at Chidambaram. In a letter she said that Chidambaram has overstepped his limits since law and order, according to the Indian Constitution, is a state matter and the figures that he cited were erroneous.

Banerjee said that there were only five political murders instead of 82 which Chidambaram had claimed.

The Congress Party, through Abdul Mannan, a Muslim and member of the All India Congress Committee, also joined in the attacks against Banerjee, saying that the latter has "has become irrelevant in Indian politics."

Mannan said that Banerjee is trying to remain in the UPA because she wants to keep the railway ministry for her party.

But after the elections, Mannan said, there will be a cabinet reshuffle at the Centre and railways will be taken away from her party.

When this happens, then Banerjee will have to leave the UPA and being a communal leader, she will return to her old ally the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)."

West Bengal Congress Chief Pradeep Bhatacharya said that they have formally passed a resolution expressing their desire to quit from the state government headed by Banerjee and were just waiting for the final decision of the party.

The Congress party has two cabinet and five junior ministers in Banerjee state government in West Bengal.