CPM concedes to ally RSP’s demand for Alipurduar, Mili Oraon’s name announced
Telegraph | 18 March 2024
The CPM conceded to ally RSP’s demand for the Alipurduar Lok Sabha constituency on Sunday, for which the name of Mili Oraon was announced, after hectic parleys through the day.
At the bipartite meetings between the CPM and the other Left constituents, the CPI, the Forward Bloc, the RSP and later in the Left Front, the partners were told that they could no longer stick to the idea of “traditional seats”.
When the Trinamul came into being in 1998, the CPM’s vote share was around 35.41 per cent, while the other three major constituents strength at the polling booths was CPI (3.64 per cent), Forward Bloc (3.3 per cent) and RSP (4.84 per cent) respectively.
By 2021 Assembly elections, vote share of the three Left constituents had come down to below one per cent, while the CPM was barely above four per cent.
Despite the heavy bleeding, the Front partners have held on to their claims on the traditional seats.
Out of the 42 seats in Bengal, the CPM contested from 32 seats leaving ten for the allies. Forward Bloc in Cooch Behar, Barasat and Purulia, RSP in Balurghat, Alipurduar, Behrampore and Joynagar, while the CPI contested from Midnapore, Ghatal and Basirhat.
The Left Front has already announced the name of CPI’s Biplab Bhatta from Midnapore and RSP’s Joydeb Siddhanta from Balurghat. After the nomination of Oraon from Alipurduar, RSP’s quota is completed by 50 per cent.
The Left Front had earlier announced the names of Nitish Chandra Roy of Forward Bloc and CPM’s Debraj Burman for the seats of Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri respectively.
All the three seats --- Alipurduar, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri -- will go to polls on April 16, during the first of the seven-phase elections in the state, the dates of which were announced by the chief election commissioner Rajeev Kumar on Saturday.
With the name of Oraon, the Left has fielded candidates in 17 of the 42 seats in Bengal, with room for others like the Congress to join in.
“Talks are on with like-minded parties over sharing of seats. There is still time and we will come up with a formula to accommodate everyone,” said Mohammad Salim, the CPM state secretary.
The differences within the Left parties are yet to be sorted as each of the junior partners has been asked to give up one seat.
“RSP has been given the seats of Alipurduar and Balurghat. If Congress has to be accommodated, they will have to leave the claim on Berhampore,” said a CPM leader.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, while there was no formal seat sharing, the LF did not field any candidates from the two Congress held seats of Behrampore and Maldah South. Though Id Mohammad, a former MLA, contested from the seat on an RSP ticket and got one per cent of the votes.
Likewise, Forward Bloc has refused to leave Barasat, on which another potential ally the Indian Secular Front (part of the alliance for the 2021 Assembly polls) was keen. The CPM is pursuing the CPI to leave Purulia for the Congress, where it still has some presence, and keep Barasat. The Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya has been asked to negotiate with the ISF, which has now rescinded its earlier list of eight candidates and is doing a re-think.
The CPI on the other hand refused to give up its claim on Basirhat, from where CPM was keen to field the former Sandeshkhali MLA Nirapada Sardar. Sardar shot into the limelight following the protests against the arrested Trinamul strongman Shahjahan Sheikh. Sardar had spent over a fortnight behind bars and was released on the orders of the Calcutta high court.
“We want to field our own candidate from Ghatal in West Midnapore this time. It has been many years since we contested from any of the three Lok Sabha seats in West Midnapore,” said a CPM state committee member.
In the first list that the Left had announced on Thursday, 13 seats were for the CPM and one each for the partners: CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc.
The Congress was keen on contesting from the Alipurduar seat, but the party is yet to make up its mind on whether it will go alone or with the Left Front in the upcoming elections.
The state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has called a meeting of the party’s election committee on Tuesday.