Bengal polls: Left, Congress to seal seat-sharing deal by Jan-end
Asserting that they will jointlyfight the “communal” BJP and the “fascist” Trinamool Congressin West Bengal, the Left Front and the Congress on Sunday saidthat their seat-sharing arrangement for the upcoming stateassembly elections will be finalised by the end of this month.
Congress state chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said thathis party and the Left Front will hold further parleys tofinalise the nitty-gritty of the deal.
Senior leaders of the two parties held talks earlierin the day over the seat-sharing agreement.
Left Front chairman Biman Bose said that though theBJP is the “biggest enemy of the country”, but given thesituation in West Bengal, the fight is against both the TMCand the saffron party to save the state from communal strifeand the “binary” that is being created among the people.
“In order to defeat the communal BJP on one hand andthe fascist TMC on the other, we have to fight them togetheras a democratic alliance,” Chowdhury, leader of the grand oldparty in the Lok Sabha, said at a joint press conference ofthe Left Front and the Congress.
He said that the parleys between his party and theLeft Front are being held in a cordial and friendlyatmosphere.
Endorsing Chowdhurys views, Bose said that assemblyconstituency-wise list of seats to be fought by each partywill be finalised within January.
“We, the Left and the Congress, want to fight theelections shoulder to shoulder in order to save the people ofthe state and the country,” Basu said.
He said that there is no misunderstanding between theLeft Front and the Congress on seat sharing.
Asked about the TMCs suggestions to the two partiesto join hands with them to fight the BJP, Bose said that itwas the Mamata Banerjee-led party that has given the saffronparty a foot-hold in West Bengal.
“It (the suggestion) is an attempt by the TMC tomislead the people of the state,” he said.
The two parties are likely to hold a mega joint rallyin Kolkata sometime soon, sources said.
Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due inApril-May.
During the 2016 assembly elections, too, the twoparties had stitched an alliance and bagged 76 seats.
However, during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the twoparties had fought separately and while the Congress won twoseats, the Left Front, which ruled the state from 1977-2011,drew a blank.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)
