Seat sharing among Left Front partners in Bengal triggers dissent

Kolkata: Seat sharing for the coming Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal has triggered dissent and apprehension among three important partners of the Left Front (LF), a coalition of eight parties which ruled the eastern state from 1977 to 2011.

State leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI), All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) told HT that having already suffered severe setbacks in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly polls, the LF may be pushed to the edge of the cliff if they cannot recover ground in regions that used to be their strongholds.

The differences surfaced during five internal meetings the LF partners have held since January as leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) told the other three parties to contest no more than two seats each out of Bengal’s 42.

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Till March 28, the LF announced 21 candidates of whom 17 are from CPI(M) since it controlled maximum Lok Sabha and assembly seats in Bengal till 2011 when the LF was ousted by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Of the remaining four candidates, two belong to RSP while AIFB and CPI have been allotted one each so far.

AIFB has even alleged that while giving priority to the alliance with Congress, CPI(M) has ignored the strength of its own partners.

AIFB state secretary Naren Chatterjee said, “Congress announced eight Lok Sabha candidates on March 21. Among these seats is Purulia which AIFB won 10 times consecutively from 1977 to 2009. How can we spare the seat for Congress which won from Purulia once in 1951 and, for the second and last time, in 1971?”

CPI(M) and its LF partners lost all Lok Sabha and assembly seats in the last elections while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the main opposition force.

LF leaders said the Congress did not perform any better in comparison. It managed to retain only two Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and drew a blank in 2021.

“We have been offered the Barasat and Cooch Behar seats but we will field a candidate against Congress in Purulia and contest two more seats as well. We will not field candidates against CPI(M) but nothing stops us from contesting against Congress,” Chatterjee said.

Cooch Behar, which used to be an AIFB stronghold, the party had won the seat 10 times consecutively between 1977 to 2009. BJP wrested it from TMC in 2019.

The LF has not yet announced the candidate from Barasat since AIFB has taken a strong stand on the overall seat-sharing process. AIFB won the Barasat seat five times between 1977 and 2004.

RSP has been allotted two seats – Balurghat and Alipurduar – which it won 10 times in a row between 1977 and 2009. However, both are located in the north Bengal region where BJP won more seats than TMC in 2019 and 2021.

RSP state secretary Manoj Bhattacharya said, “The Joynagar seat in south Bengal is equally important for us because we won it eight times consecutively between 1980 and 2009.”

The CPI has so far been allotted only the Midnapore seat which it won 10 times (including a bypoll) in a row between 1980 and 2014. Veteran CPI leader Indrajit Gupta, former Union home minister in the H D Deve Gowda-led United Front government, represented the seat five times.

CPI state secretary Swapan Banerjee said, “CPI(M) has proposed that at least one-third of the seats should be left for Congress. For the CPI Bengal unit, this is a strange situation because in Kerala the Congress has been contesting against us.”

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In Kerala, the ruling Left Democratic Front (LRD) led by CPI(M) is contesting this year against Congress at several seats, including Wayanad held by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

The CPI Kerala unit has nominated Annie Raja, general secretary of the party’s National Federation of Indian Women and wife of CPI national secretary D Raja, as its candidate against Gandhi. At Thiruvananthapuram, which Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has represented since 2009, CPI has fielded senior party leader Pannyian Raveendran.

In Bengal, however, LF partners agreed to share seats with Congress when talks on forming the INDIA alliance began last year. They said it made sense because they are opposed to both TMC and BJP.

Although veteran CPI(M) leader Biman Bose is the Bengal LF chairman, the seat-sharing talks were headed by CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim who is contesting the Murshidabad seat in Murshidabad district which used to be a Congress bastion. State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is contesting the adjacent Berhampore seat which he has been representing since 1999.

“The allies have to realise that the seat sharing is being worked out on the basis of surveys done at the ground level. We based our calculations on statistics,” Salim told HT.

No Congress leader commented on the issue saying it is an internal matter of the LF.