Updated: December 24, 2020 4:10:48 pm
Sitaram Yechury from CPI (M) with Rahul Gandhi from Congress. (Express file photo: Tashi Tobgyal)
The congressional high command formally approved an alliance with the Left Front for the next assembly elections in West Bengal, the head of the state party, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, said on Thursday.
In October, the central committee of the CMF had decided that the party and the left front would have an electoral understanding with Congress to fight the ruling Trinamool Congress and an aggressive BJP in West Bengal, where both the CPM and Congress have faced an existential crisis.
Today the High Command of Congress has formally approved the electoral alliance with the #Left parties in the impending West Bengal election.@INCIndia@INCWestBengal
– Adhir Chowdhury (@adhirrcinc) Dec 24, 2020
In November, following Congressional Leader Rahul Gandhi’s online meeting with Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and some other state leaders, sources said that party would begin talks to share seats with the Left Front after the Acting President of Congress, Sonia Gandhi, gave the green signal.
Although the seat-sharing talks before the last Assembly elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the two parties failed to reach an agreement, were not easy, Congress reaped the benefits both in terms of seats won and of a high concentration of voters in electoral districts in North Bengal.
The Left Front failed to win a single seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, losing security deposits in 39 constituencies, while Congress won only two seats, losing security deposits in 38 other constituencies. On the other hand, the BJP won 18 of Lok Sabha’s 42 seats, just four behind TMC’s 22 seats, announcing itself as a formidable force in the Bengal political arena.
In the 2016 Bengal assembly polls, the Left Front and Congress together had won 76 of 294 seats in West Bengal after garnering around 38 percent of the vote. The Left Front received 26 percent of the votes, while Congress obtained only 12 percent. Despite such a low vote quota, Congress won 44 seats, while the Left Front won only 32.
At last month’s meeting, Pradesh congressional leaders had unanimously defended the alliance. Discussions to reaffirm it were delayed after the party’s electoral setback in Bihar. The high command of Congress took special note of the exhaustion of the party’s vote share in Bengal, which fell to 6.29 percent in 2019, while the BJP was 40 percent and that of the Trinamool Congress was 43 percent. .
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