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Before key polls, tough talks on between CPI(M), Cong, ISF over seat sharing
The Left Front partners have already given up more than 30 seats for the ISF and the latter has been urged to climb down from its demand for 40-odd seats.
Tough negotiations between the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M), the Congress and cleric Abbasuddin Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF) over sharing of seats for the coming Bengal assembly polls reached its final stage on Thursday. The candidate list of the newly formed coalition is likely to be announced on Friday.
Leaders in the Left Front said the Congress was urged to climb down from its claim to 92 seats to accommodate the demands made by the ISF. The CPI (M) too, might end up contesting less than 145 of the state’s 294 seats, the party’s leaders said.
The Left Front partners have already given up more than 30 seats for the ISF and the latter has been urged to climb down from its demand for 40-odd seats. The ISF wants to contest the Nandigram seat (in East Midnapore) that chief minister Mamata Banerjee will contest.
The Nandigram seat was held by her aide-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari who is likely to be fielded again by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP's national election committee met in Delhi at 9.20 pm on Friday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to decide candidates for the 60 seats that will be contested in the first two phases. Nandigram is one of these seats. Adhikari was present at the meeting.
In the 2016 state polls, the Congress contested 92 seats and won 44 while the CPI (M) fought from 148 constituencies and won only 26. The Congress and the Left Front were allies in 2016 but the Trinamool Congress (TMC) emerged at the top with 211 seats.
Although Left Front partner Forward Bloc, which contested 25 seats in 2016, was initially promised 18 seats, it might finally get 16. “We were assured that we will contest from 18 seats,” said Forward Bloc state secretary Naren Chatterjee.
Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) state secretary Manoj Bhattacharya said his party had been allotted 11 seats although it contested 19 in the last polls.
In 2016, the BJP wrested only three seats but has now set a target to win at least 200.
During the talks held on Tuesday, the Congress spared three seats for the ISF but the party’s state president Adhir Chowdhury skipped the discussion held at the state headquarters of the CPI (M).
The Congress agreed to spare these three seats in south Bengal but the ISF wanted to negotiate for some more seats in the north Bengal region.
