The Congress on Tuesday declared the names of 75 seats from where it will contest Assemby polls, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Bhawanipore seat, after
reaching a seat adjustment understanding with the left Front in West Bengal, Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said.
The names of the candidates would be declared by the AICC from Delhi.
The number of seats for Congress may go up after both the parties finalise seat-adjustment agreement.
Informing that the talks on seat-adjustment with the left Front were almost complete Chowdhury said, “this time it was not the leaders who planned the alliance but party workers who forced us to do so as we are facing an unprecedented situation in West Bengal which has resulted from the violent rule perpetrated by the Trinamool Congress.”
The Congress was eyeing about 100 seats.
Insiders maintained that the party could settle down with about 90 seats finally.
The left Front on the other hand was not willing to leave more than 75 seats for the Congress. In that case the two sides could go for a friendly fight in some areas in Malda, Murshidabad and Alipurduar sources said.
Out of the 75 seats that the party declared on Tuesday five are in Malda, two in Nadia, six in North 24 Parganas, four in South 24 Parganas, five in Kolkata, three each in Howrah, Hooghly, two Midnapores and Bankura, four each in Purulia, Burdwan and Birbhum and 15 in Murshidabad.
“There are some problems with some seats which both the sides do not want to leave. In that case we have decided to go for a friendly fight,” he said.
Congress which is also fighting the elections on an anti-Trinamool Congress agenda is likely to field a galaxy of heavyweight leaders including Somen Mitra, Abdul Mannan, OP Mishra, Deepa Dasmunshi, and Arunabha Ghosh making it apparently clear that the party was keen to see the back of Trinamool in Bengal.
While Congress may field OP Mishra from Bhawanipore, BJP which had taken a lead of about 200 votes from this seat in 2014 General Election may field Chandra Bose, nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, State BJP sources said.
The BJP which focussed on about 70-75 seats is likely to declare its candidates’ list from Delhi probably on Thursday, the State leadership said.
Propelled by the
Modi wave the BJP had polled about 17 per cent votes in 2014 elections.
However the party’s
fortunes had dwindled in
the last year’s civic elections when it polled about 10 per cent votes.
Meanwhile sources in the CPI(M) which was finding it difficult to convince its allies like Forward Bloc, RSP and CPI to leave seats to the Congress on Tuesday said — after two rounds of talks — that Front partners were willing to sacrifice some seats in the interest of greater good of the State.
Accordingly the Bloc may leave 8-9 seats out of its quota of 34, RSP is ready to leave 4 out of 23 it usually fights and CPI may leave 2 out of 14 seats, sources said.