State polls: Left Front allies push for no Cong tie-up

Allies of West Bengal’s Left Front have signalled they may go alone in next year’s state elections, casting doubt over the decades-old alliance with the Congress party, which has failed to deliver electoral gains in recent contests.

The Left Front, which first came to power in West Bengal in 1977 and ruled uninterrupted for 34 years, had long been at odds with the Congress. But after the 2011 ouster of the Left government by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress (TMC), the two sides came closer, contesting the 2016 and 2021 Assembly polls together. They also struck seat-sharing deals in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. None, however, yielded success, with the Left drawing a blank in both the Assembly and parliamentary contests.

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Against the backdrop, Tuesday’s Left Front evening meeting saw strong voices in favour of fighting the 2026 Assembly elections without Congress. The Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) argued that the alliance had outlived its purpose, pressing to field candidates in the constituencies they contested back in 1977. The Forward Bloc has demanded 34 seats and the RSP 23 seats, party leaders said. The Communist Party of India (CPI) adopted a more nuanced position, saying Congress could be “welcome” into the alliance, but only if the CPI was granted a larger share of seats. The CPI leaders stressed that since the Left Front’s inception, the party had never been allotted seats on par with its strength as the second-largest partner after the CPI-M.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M, the dominant force within the Left Front, refrained from making any direct comment on either the Congress question or its allies’ seat demands during the meeting. State secretary Mohammed Salim represented the CPI-M, alongside CPI state secretary Swapan Banerjee, Forward Bloc leader Naren Chattopadhyay, and RSP leader Tapan Hore. Left Front chairman Biman Bose sought to keep options open, saying further discussions would be necessary on seat-sharing and alliances ahead of the 2026 polls. His remarks indicated that the door for a Congress understanding has not yet been firmly shut. The uncertainty comes amid competing signals from the Congress camp. Only days earlier, state Congress president Shubhankar Sarkar said grassroots workers wanted the party to contest all 294 Assembly seats on its own, underscoring strains in the relationship with the Left.

With less than a year to go before West Bengal heads to the polls, the question of whether the Congress and the Left Front can find common ground remains unresolved, adding another layer of intrigue to a contest likely to be dominated by chief minister Banerjee’s TMC and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).