Regardless of friendly overtures made by senior leaders from either sides both the left and the Congress look divided over the issue of electoral alliance between the two parties.
While a number of Congress leaders want an electoral “understanding” if not an alliance with the left Front in the coming Assembly elections an equally vociferous section of the party wants to take a “far-sighted decision” and not a “short-sighted” one.
In that case these leaders have advocated “ek la chalo policy” so as not to ruffle Mamata Banerjee keeping the door for a future alliance with her Trinamool Congress open for the parliamentary elections of 2019. This strategy the anti-left leaders say will serve the party’s national aspirations against the NDA.
“There are arguments from both the sides. But everything depends upon the high command. If it wants the State unit to go with the left then we will have to do it. But my personal view is that Congress will do good to go it all alone in the polls,” said former Bengal Congress president Manas Bhunia.
On the other hand senior party leaders like present PCC president Adhir Chowdhury, Abdul Mannan, and veteran leader Somen Mitra wants the party to go with the Marxists. “The so-called talks of farsighted policy will become a far cry by 2019 because by then there will be no Congress left in Bengal as the party will be decimated by the Trinamool Congress as it has been doing for the past 4-5 years,” said Mitra adding “the left at best can ditch us but the Trinamool will simply decimate us.”
On the other hand suggestive statements made by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and his politburo colleague Prakash Karat in support of a broad-based alliance of “left democratic forces” left partners like Forward Bloc have expressed reservations about such an alliance.
Instead the lesser partners like Bloc and CPI want a broad-based coalition of left forces including those outside the left Front like SUCI, CPI(M-l) etc. Some leaders in these parties have also spoken of separate campaign during the elections bringing fissure in the Front unity itself. “We will see when such a situation comes. But for now we have the right to form our own views and develop our own strategy” said a senior CPI(M) leader adding “the other left partners will have to consider the fact that sometimes survival becomes a bigger factor than ideological issues. Today the demonic rule of Trinamool Congress which is many times worse than that of SS Ray of 1970s has to be ended. For that, the left and the Congress needs to come on one platform.”