Mulayam Singh Yadav keen to work with CPM again

KOLKATA: Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party is seeking to renew its ties with the Opposition Left Front in West Bengal, with the party’s state president Bijoy Singh Bhadoria writing to Front chairman Biman Bose, expressing their desire to work with the CPM-led Front in the state.

“We have written a letter to the Front chairman Bose expressing our desire to work with them again. Even though we contested three Lok Sabha seats against official Left candidates this year, we had supported Left nominees in the rest of the 39 seats and also worked for them. We were compelled to contest the three seats as CPM leaders like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri failed to resolve the seat-sharing issue,” Bhadoria told ET.

“BJP is fast spreading its tentacles in West Bengal and it’s time for all democratic and secular political forces to come under one common platform to fight the saffron party,” Bhadoria said, when asked why they were so keen to work with the Left Front again.

Asenior CPM leader said they have no objections to consider the SP’s plea to work with the Front again, but the leadership has not taken any decision on the issue as yet. Samajwadi Party (SP) has had a long association with the Left dating back to 1982, and its leader Kiranmoy Nanda was also a minister of the previous Left Front government.

But before this year’s Lok Sabha elections, SP developed differences with the CPM over seat sharing, and it contested three LS seats-—Raigunj, Malda North and Birbhum— against the CPM and Left candidates. The CPM took exception to this and kept Mulayam’s party out of its affairs in the state.