With their brief honeymoon failing to produce the desired result the CPI(M) and the Congress seem to have parted ways in West Bengal deciding to contest the two lok Sabha and one Assembly by-elections on their own accord.
With the two parties contesting separately the Trinamool and the BJP are likely to gain the most from this multi-cornered fight, experts feel. Bengal is going to by-elections on November 19 for Tamluk and Coochbehar lok Sabha and Manteshwar Assembly seats.
While Tamluk was vacated by sitting MP Subhendu Adhikary who is currently the Bengal Transport Minister his Coochbehar counterpart had died necessitating the elections.
The CPI(M) State leadership would while taking a decision to go it alone said the decision was taken at the behest of the party’s central unit which denounced the earlier alliance during the Assembly elections when the left fared disastrously. “We were not against continuing with the alliance but our central unit was against carrying it forward,” a senior Central leader said.
A livid PCC president Adhir Chowdhury said the CPI(M) should at least have showed the courtesy to inform the Congress of its decision. “Now we will have to think whether to continue with our joint agitation against TMC or not,” he said.
The CPI(M) however said that instead of contesting polls jointly the two parties should carry on with the joint agitations so that the people do not take them as opportunists who unite during the elections only.
The Assembly polls alliance between the two parties had benefited the Congress more that the left as it won 44 seats while the left got only 31 leading critics to wonder whether the Congress could get its votes transferred to the left the way the CPI(M) could manage to get its voters vote for the tri-colour party.