After a humiliating performance in the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal, two parties in the Left Front — the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) — said on June 5 that they were not in favour of any future alliance between the Left Front and the Congress.
The Left Front failed to win a single seat in the State while Congress bagged one in Malda South. The Trinamool Congress won 29 seats of the 42. The Left Front contested the Lok Sabha election from 33 seats, while the remaining nine constituencies had Congress candidates.
AIFB state secretary Naren Chatterjee said that the alliance between the Congress and the Left in both the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 and 2024 had not worked. The AIFB lost in all three constituencies of Barasat, Purulia, and Coochbehar that they contested. They had a vote share of merely 0.24% across West Bengal. Interestingly, both Purulia and Coochbehar also had Congress candidates even though the parties were in alliance.
Mr. Chatterjee said, “The seat-sharing between the Left Front and the Congress was decided by the CPI(M), we were not consulted. So we had our own candidates in these seats.”
Mr. Chatterjee also blamed the losses on the political history of the Congress in the State where they had been political adversaries in the past. He said, “Why should we, the Left, bear the burden of the things that Congress has done in Bengal in the past? If we form an alliance, we will never be able to avoid sharing the responsibility.” He said that his party had no intention of sharing seats with Congress, whom they opposed ideologically.
Historically, the Congress and the Left have always been at loggerheads in West Bengal. Talking about their next course of action, Mr. Chatterjee said, “We will discuss this with the entire Left Front and, especially the CPI(M), and say that this alliance cannot go on.”
The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) had a different take. Manoj Bhattacharya, general secretary of RSP, said, “I do not consider this an alliance between the Congress and the Left Front, this is more of an adjustment. I do not oppose the coming together of the parties. We had to pair up with another secular or like-minded party to put up a fight against the BJP and the Trinamool Congress.”
Later this month, the Left Front will hold a meeting with all its allies to discuss their losses and analyse the root causes behind the defeat. Both the AIFB and the RSP said they do not see another alliance happening between the Congress and the Left again in the near future, but that no concrete decision has been reached on the matter.
