Bengal Congress president Somen Mitra said on Sunday that the state unit of the party had decided to convey to the central leadership about its intention to contest all 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state alone.
“Our election committee meeting has taken a decision to fight the polls alone. We want to contest all 42 seats,” Mitra told a news conference.
The announcement made it clear that the Bengal Congress had slammed the brakes on talks to arrive at an agreement with the Left Front on sharing of seats to contest the Lok Sabha polls. It had been agreed that the Congress would be allotted 17 seats and the Left Front 25.
But over the past few days, the talks to decide on certain seats hit several roadblocks. Even as the parleys continued, the Left announced candidates for 25 seats, which the Congress considered as an affront.
Senior leaders like Deepa Das Munshi and Abdul Mannan, who is the leader of Opposition in the Assembly, have been voicing their opinion against the seat sharing. Going a step further, Deepa gave consent to her supporters to start campaigning in Raiganj, for which the Left had already declared sitting MP Md. Salim’s name.
“It’s a matter of dignity of the party. To maintain our dignity, we have decided to come out of the seat-sharing agreement,” said Mitra, who, party sources said, was very keen on a seat-sharing arrangement.
But Mitra, according to sources, had to dilute his stand in the face of stiff opposition within the party to the electoral understanding.
“We are being repeatedly told by the Left that we have only 10 per cent vote share. But they can’t forget that we got four seats with this vote percentage. But they had won only two seats with 30 per cent plus votes in 2014,” Mitra said after chairing a meeting to zero in on candidates for 10 Bengal seats which will go to polls in the first three phases on April 11, 18 and 23.
Even after the announcement from Bidhan Bhavan to go solo, CPM central committee member Rabin Deb said: “We will wait for the Congress high command’s decision.”
