NEW DELHI, Dec 24: For the first time, the Congress and the left Parties in West Bengal will fight the coming Assembly elections together against the two formidable opponents, the Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in the state, and its strong challenger the upcoming BJP.
The Congress high command on Thursday formally approved the proposal for alliance with the Left Front, state party chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury announced.
The CPM central committee had accepted the party’s West Bengal unit’s suggestion for seat-sharing agreement with the Congress in October itself. The local Congress units were also favourable to the proposal but a formal announcement so far awaited the nod from the Congress high command.
West Bengal, along with Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry, will go to polls in March-April next year.
In a state where both the CPM and Congress have been facing an existential crisis after the left front eliminated Congress and about a decade earlier itself got eliminated by the TMC, an electoral alliance could be the best alternative though in the process the partners may end up indirectly helping the BJP by cutting down the vote share of the TMC.
The former Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s and Chowdhury during an online meeting in November had agreed to initiate the seat-sharing process with the left parties if formally approved by the interim president Sonia Gandhi.
The efforts between the Congress and the left parties for informal seat sharing had not been a smooth sailing in the past and both in the 2016 state Assembly elections and 2019 Parliamentary polls, the talks failed at the last moment. And both the times the Congress reaped the benefits in terms of seats won as it has a high concentration of voters in select constituencies in north Bengal.
The Left Front had failed to win a single seat in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, losing security deposits in 39 constituencies while the Congress bagged just two seats, losing security deposits in 38 other constituencies. On the other hand, the BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats, only four behind TMC’s 22 seats, announcing its entry as a formidable force in the Bengal political arena.
In 2016 Bengal assembly polls, the Left Front and Congress together had won 76 out of 294 seats in West Bengal after garnering about 38 per cent vote share. The Left Front received 26 per cent of the votes, while the Congress got only 12 per cent. Despite such a low vote share, Congress won 44 seats, while the Left Front managed to bag only 32.
In the meeting last month, the Pradesh Congress leaders had unanimously argued for the alliance. The discussions to firm it up got delayed following the party’s electoral setback in Bihar. The Congress high command took special note of the party’s depleting vote share in Bengal, which was down to 6.29 per cent in 2019, while the BJP’s was 40 per cent and the Trinamool Congress’ was 43 per cent.
(Manas Dasgupta)