A day after an undeclared village-level alliance between the Left and the BJP routed the ruling Trinamool Congress in Nandakumar Baharampur Cooperative Credit Society elections in Nandakumar block — off Nandigram — in East Midnapore district, both the Congress and the Marxists have started thinking in terms of going back to alliance politics.
A joint panel of the village level BJP and Left leaders won 52 out of 63 seats leaving the TMC to a distant third place.
While TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said that the Nandakumar polls --- though not an indicator of what the people of Bengal were thinking --- only proved the “secret alliance between the Ram and Wam (BJP and Left)” that had seen the saffron outfit win 77 seats in 2021 elections.
The Left outrightly rejected Ghosh’s claim saying it was “mischievous to create division among the voters.” A senior Left leader said that “in rural elections the often local issues work though the large scale corruption that the people are seeing in the television may have had an impact in the elections.” They denied any alliance with the saffron outfit.
However, when asked to comment on whether the Nandakumar had any hints for the Left and the Congress to think differently in the next year’s panchayat elections CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakrabarty said rural polls are fought on local issues and the top Left leadership did not meddle much into that.
A senior Pradesh Congress leader too said that the tri-colour party had fought elections jointly with the Left in 2016 and in 2021 adding however that the party would take the final decision at appropriate moment.
On the complete rout of the TMC in the Nandakumar cooperative society elections which can be taken as a sample survey for at least one Assembly seat the Left leadership said that the people want the Trinamool to go.
The Congress and the Left last contested jointly in 2021 Assembly polls that saw both Marxists and the tri-colour parties coming down to zero seats. While the Trinamool Congress won 212 seats the BJP bagged 77.
However subsequent polls post pandemic saw the Left doing better in many areas where they pushed the BJP to the third position.
“Panchayat elections are still some time away … let us see what happens … we don’t say that any alliance with the Left is impossible,” said a senior Congress leader from Murshidabad where the Congress has very recently formed a panchayat board with the Left after toppling the TMC in a no-confidence motion.