Kolkata: The Congress, on Thursday, officially announced that it will contest independently in all the 294 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state scheduled this year, without going for any kind of seat-sharing arrangement either with the CPI(M)-led Left Front or the Trinamool Congress.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee in New Delhi on Thursday.
The party’s representatives from West Bengal were the current state Congress president Suvankar Sarkar, former state Congress president and former five-time Lok Sabha member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and the sole Congress Lok Sabha member from West Bengal, Isha Khan Chowdhury.
After the meeting at the residence of the Congress’s national president, Mallikarjun Kharge, in the national capital, Congress general secretary and the party’s in-charge for West Bengal, Ghulam Ahmad Mir, announced the decision of the AICC to contest the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state independently without having any alliance with any other political force.
Besides Kharge and Mir, other national-level Congress leaders present at the meeting included the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and K.C. Venugopal, among others.
“Our past experiences on alliance or seat-sharing arrangements in West Bengal weakened the grassroots-level party workers in the state to a great extent. After discussions with everyone, including the state Congress leaders, it has been decided that the Congress will contest from all 294 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal independently. Poll preparations will start keeping this in mind,” Mir said.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who was keen on an alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left Front from the beginning, said that going solo was the decision of the party high command.
“We will be contesting independently this time as decided by the party’s high command,” he said.
Political observers feel that a smooth seat-sharing arrangement for the 2026 West Bengal Assembly polls had become inconceivable from the beginning.
“The two main architects of the seat-sharing arrangement between the Left Front and the Congress since 2016 were former CPI(M) general secretary late Sitaram Yechury and former state Congress president in West Bengal and former five-time Lok Sabha member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
“Now, after the demise of Yechury, there is not a single national leader in the CPI(M)’s central leadership who will be vocal in convincing the party’s central leadership for an arrangement with the Congress.
“The same thing is applicable in the case of the Congress after Chowdhury was out of the party’s major decision-making ambit,” a city-based political observer said.
(IANS)
