Congress president Rahul Gandhi is likely to start his election campaign in Bengal sometime later this month, Pradesh Congress sources said.
The new move comes in the wake of two parallel but not unconnected developments: Firstly, the proffering by the CPI(M) of a “no mutual contest” formula in at least six parliamentary seats and second, a letter from PCC president Somen Mitra to Gandhi advocating early decision on an agreeable seat-sharing formula with the Left Front which still enjoys an appreciable vote base notwithstanding BJP’s recent meteoric rise in the State.
In his letter sent on Tuesday Mitra has “expressed the opinion of the rank and file” underlining the need for a “seat-sharing or alliance” formula with the CPI(M) so as to “stop the march of the BJP in the State and dethrone the TMC in 2021 Assembly elections.”
Mitra told reporters that he had “written to Rahulji with my assessment. Now it is for our party president and the AICC to take a call on the matter.” About his assessment he said he had only written about the “aspirations of party workers and leaders.”
Though a major section of both the Congress and the Left Front have been asking for an alliance or “in the least a seat-sharing arrangement,” the two parties have failed to agree on two seats of Raiganj and Murshidabad where both the parties have a good presence and their workers are against leaving the seats.
According to inside sources both in the CPI(M) and the Congress “the mood is such that if the seats are sacrificed for the alliance to stand then the workers who have been cultivating the constituencies might go towards the BJP.”
In 2014 general elections when all the parties contested separately the Congress won four seats of: Malda North and Malda South, Behrampore and Jangipur. In multi-cornered contests Deepa Dasmunshi of the Congress lost Raiganj to Left’s Md Salim by about 3,000 votes whereas the CPI(M) defeated the tri-colour party in Murshidabad by about 25,000 votes.
After several rounds of deliberations the State committees of both the parties have refused to leave these two closely contested seats.
“Raiganj which was the constituency of PR Dasmunshi and subsequently Deepa Dasmunshi and Murshidabad are our traditional bastions and cannot be left,” a senior PCC leader said admitting however that “if the two parties fought separately then the BJP will gain an advantage.”
As for Malda North after the sitting Congress MP Mausam Benazir Noor joined the Trinamool Congress the tri-colour party is planning to field his cousin a local MLA Isha Khan Chowdhury. South Malda seat is currently held by Congress MP Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury.
A second group in the Congress has said that they would go it alone if the Left refused to leave Raiganj and Murshidabad to them. “There is no question of leaving these seats,” a CPI(M) State committee member however said.
In an apparent move to untangle the situation former PCC president Adhir Chowdhury on Monday met Gandhi in Delhi where he is known to have told the top leadership about the “importance of not leaving the Left hand” because the Congress had gained immensely from a tie-up with the Left in 2016 Assembly elections.
Chowdhury is known to have told Gandhi that the party men in Bengal either want to go it alone or join hands with the Left. But “in no circumstances they will go with the TMC.”
On the other hand in Tuesday’s letter Mitra is known to have expressed his concern about the steadily increasing vote share of the BJP and an express need to arrest his own party’s erosion by striking an early alliance with the Left so that the two parties can begin campaigning earlier than the others. “Now the ball is in the court of high command. Let’s see what happens next,” a senior Congress leader said.
“If in the given situation Rahulji comes for a campaign in Bengal he will not only start early and consolidate the organization but also he will be able to know the actual opinion of the workers,” a PCC leader said “hoping” Gandhi’s meeting would “not be postponed like it happened before.”