With alliance talks between the Congress and the Left Front almost crumbling down, Bengal tended to head for a four-corner fight in the general elections. Leaders from both the parties said they had not been approached by the other side after Saturday evening.
Subsequently Pradesh Congress president Somen Mitra on Sunday night flew to Delhi with a list of 42 probable candidates for party president Rahul Gandhi’s approval. PCC leaders on Monday said Gandhi had “given his go-ahead and anytime soon the AICC may declare a preliminary list of 12 or 15 candidates.”
Even as Congress on Monday went ahead with its decision to announce its candidates’ list the Left tended took a cautious approach withholding its decision for the remaining 17 seats which it had left out pending seat-sharing discussions between the two sides. Amidst talk process the Left had earlier announced its list of 25 candidates.
There has considerable pressure from subaltern ranks in both the sides party source said. “We want an alliance. The leaders should shun their personal ego and look at the interests of the common people who have been suffering at the hands of TMC,” said Abu Akhtar a Congress worker from Kolkata said.
“We want an alliance to resist both the TMC and BJP as both are the two sides of the same coin,” said Samarpan another Congress worker from Kasba blaming party MP “Pradip Bhattacharya and Deep Dasmunshi for the failure of talks.”
CPI(M)’s Dilip Jana wanted the party to “shed its big-brother attitude and follow the path shown by the great Jyoti Basu to sew up the alliance.”
The Congress had been asking for 18 seats while the Left was not willing to part with 13-14 seats. Out of the 18 seats the major bones of contention was Purulia --- from where the Congress had in 2014 polled about 2.5 lakh votes whereas the Left had got 3.25 lakh votes—and Basirhat where the Left and Congress got about 2.84 lakh and 1.20 lakh votes respectively.
The Congress had also been asking for Raiganj seat where former Union Minister Deepa Dasmunshi had in 2014 lost out to the Left Front’s Md Salim by a wafer-thin margin of 1,300 votes. With the “CPI(M) trying to dictate its terms on us” and with Rahul Gandhi categorically asking the State party units “not to make compromise on the party’s prestige we had no other way but to stop the talks.”
Both the parties had jointly contested the Assembly elections in 2016 with the Left Front managing to get nearly 90 percent of its votes transferred to the Congress whereas the latter managing to transfer about 74 percent of its votes transferred to the Left. “Had the Congress been able to transfer its votes like we did we would have formed the Government,” said a senior PCC member adding “Though out of 294 the Alliance got 77 seats we lost out to the Trinamool Congress in 70 seats by small margins of 150 to 4,000 votes.”
Keeping that prospect in mind a number of leaders on both sides had been asking for alliance between “particularly because the Election Commission looks more serious beginning its area domination exercise pretty early.”
While the Congress was almost ready with its list of 12 candidates sources told your reporter that the party could field Priya Roy Chowdhury from Coochbehar, Sukh Bilas Burma from Jalpaiguri, Shankar Malakar from Darjeeling, Deepa Dasmunshi from Raiganj, Isha Khan Chowdhury from Malda North, his uncle AH Khan Chowdhury from Malda South, Adhir Chowdhury from Behrampore, Abhijeet Mukheree from Jangipur, Abu Hena from Murshidabad, Nepal Chandra Mahato from Purulia.
The Left Front however was holding a marathon meeting on its next strategy. Insiders said that one group in the Front was for leaving the 17 seats to the Congress irrespective of the other party’s stance which would not only save the CPI(M) from allegations of spoiling the alliance but also keep doors of talks open.
The second groups wanted to go it all out to give the Congress the real feel of its strength in the State. The third opinion wanted to leave 11-13 seats --- including the 4 seats the party had won in 2014 --- for the Congress.
The BJP which had fast come up as the prime opposition party in the State on the other hand was likely to announce its own list of candidates on Tuesday, party sources said.