Dubai: The stupendous success of the Mahagatbandhan (grand alliance) against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Bihar assembly elections has opened up possibilities of a realignment of secular forces in next year’s state elections in West Bengal.
While the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) general secretary, Sitaram Yechuri, made a veiled reference to such a possibility in the wake of the Bihar results on Sunday, a section of the Congress leadership in Bengal is also keen on exploring possibilities of an electoral alliance with CPM against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
In a significant development, the state unit of the Congress party in Bengal has invited Somnath Chatterjee — former Lok Sabha speaker and senior CPM leader, who was expelled from the party some time back — as a guest speaker at a seminar titled ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and Modern India: Contribution and Legacy’, to be held in Kolkata on November 14. Several other senior Left leaders have also been invited to the seminar.
Commenting on the likelihood of any electoral alliance with Congress in Bengal, Yechuri had said on Sunday: “In politics, two and two do not always make four. So let’s see how things pan out in the days ahead.”
“We have not got any formal proposal yet from the Left. But having said that, it is also true that our party will be open to such a proposal if and when the possibility arises. The fight in Bengal is against the ruling TMC. And given TMC’s earlier dalliance with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP government at the Centre, Congress and CPM are the true secular forces in the state,” Omprakash Mishra, Congress general secretary in Bengal, told Gulf News from Kolkata on Monday.
His words found an interesting echo in what Mohammad Salim, CPM MP and politburo member, had to say. Speaking to Gulf News from Kolkata on Monday, Salim said: “Unlike Bihar, the fight isn’t against the BJP in Bengal because BJP is not the main opposition force in the state. The Left parties occupy that space. So an alliance in Bengal along the lines of Bihar is not possible, to be very honest. However, there is a genuine concern in Bengal about the way the TMC government is functioning, making a mockery of democratic ethos and the law and order situation. Our party shares this concern and we respect the demand being made in various quarters for secular forces to come together and form a united front against the TMC.”
According to political observers, the seminar on Nehru will, in all probability, be used as a platform to coalesce secular forces in the state — namely Congress and CPM — to try and forge a potent electoral alliance against TMC.
Bihar, it seems, has set the ball of political arithmetic rolling in Bengal.