CPM no longer coy, courts West Bengal Congress

New Delhi:The CPM Central Committee has proposed a ‘no mutual contest’ to the Congress in six West Bengal seats — four represented by the Congress in Parliament and two by the Marxists — in the coming Lok Sabha polls. The CPM move is seen as a frantic attempt for an alliance with the Congress against the Trinamool Congress and BJP in West Bengal.

Political circles see the proposal as a CPM ‘tester’ before exploring a larger alliance with the Congress in the rest of the seats in West Bengal, which had seen dominance of an anti-Congress Left Front from 1977 to 2011.

The Congress is yet to formally respond, but party president Rahul Gandhi met some West Bengal Congress leaders on Monday, including anti-Trinamool leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, to elicit their views on electoral alliances.


The CPM proposal, made on Monday by party general secretary Sitaram Yechury, would mean Congress not contesting the Raiganj and Murshidabad seats which CPM won by narrow margins last time. However both seats have strong Congress claimants, including Deepa Dasmunsi for Raiganj.

“In West Bengal, the Central Committee had earlier decided that the CPM will adopt suitable tactics to maximize the pooling of anti-BJP, anti-Trinamool votes. In accordance with this, the CPM proposes ‘no mutual contest’ in six sitting Lok Sabha seats currently held by Congress and the Left Front,” Yechury said at a news conference in New Delhi.