CPI general secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy has said the Left Front cannot accept Congress’s “unjustified” demand on seat sharing in Bengal and that it now looks like that the two political forces will fight the Lok Sabha elections in the state separately.

He described as “unexpected” the Bengal Congress’s move on Sunday to call off seat-sharing talks with the CPM-led Left Front for the Lok Sabha polls.

Bengal has 42 Lok Sabha seats.

“They (the Congress) were asking for 17 seats. The Left Front offered them 12 seats. They are asking for five more seats which are Left front seats... (it is) unjustified. In some of these seats, they got 2-3 per cent of the votes (in the previous elections),” Reddy told PTI here.

Reddy said that in Bengal’s Basirhat Lok Sabha seat, CPI got four lakh votes in the previous elections and the Congress one lakh votes.

“But still they demand that the seat should be given to them. This type of demands cannot be accepted by the Left Front. They are asking for one All India Forward Bloc seat and three CPM seats. So, it will be very complicated,” Reddy said.

Now, it looks like the Left Front and the Congress will fight the elections in Bengal separately, the veteran communist leader said.

According to the Left Front’s seat-sharing formula, CPM will contest 22 seats, the CPI and AIFB three each and the RSP two, with the remaining 12 to be left to the Congress.

With the Congress deciding to go it alone, the Left Front will meet today to decide how to distribute the 42 seats among the partners, Reddy said.

“It has been decided by our party unit that we don’t want any adjustment or alliance by compromising our dignity. The Left can’t dictate to us on who will be a candidate and who won’t. We will fight alone in Bengal,” state Congress chief Somen Mitra said in Calcutta after a closed-door party meet on Sunday evening.

The Congress’s decision on Sunday paved the way for a four-cornered contest in Bengal involving the Trinamul, the BJP, the Left Front and the Congress.