No clarity on Cong-Left seat-sharing even as BJP, TMC sound poll bugle

WITH the Congress keeping its hopes up regarding an alliance with the Trinamool Congress, till the party dashed the same and unveiled names for all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal on Sunday, the grand old party is still to work out a seat-sharing arrangement with its partner Left. This is even as the BJP too has released nearly half the names from its list.

From the outset, the CPI(M) was clear that it will fight against the TMC in Bengal, even as it maintained that it was a part of the INDIA bloc. The Congress too initially said it would fight the TMC and BJP in the state, but later moulded its stance given the keenness of the central leadership to reach an understanding with the TMC. The Congress and Left do not have a single candidate in the Bengal Assembly, while the Congress has just 2 MPs in the Lok Sabha from the state.

The list by the TMC came eight days after the BJP announced 20 candidates from the state in its first list of 195 candidates.

Fissures between the Congress and TMC were at the fore as Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered the state in January. As Rahul traversed the state, Banerjee announced her party’s decision to “fight the BJP alone in the state”. She offered the Congress two Lok Sabha seats, an offer which the party refused, while insisting that “negotiations on seat-sharing with the TMC were on”.

The Left Front, however, has been fully behind Rahul in his “fight against the RSS-BJP injustice” and taken potshots at the TMC chief. “She is trying to derail the INDIA bloc’s “train”.

Last week, senior CPI(M) leader Mohd Salim and state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury held a meeting to discuss seat-sharing. “It is almost finalised. While the Congress will leave Murshidabad for us, we