Who Gains From A Bengal Alliance? Cong? Left Front? Neither?

The Left-Congess alliance in Bengal is riddled with challenges.

The Left-Congress alliance in Bengal is riddle with challenges.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/ The Quint)

It is reminiscent of the 2016 West Bengal Assembly Elections when for the first time in a very long time, the Left Front and the Gandhis shared a common stage in Kolkata. It was a strange sight as the azaan was sounded from a nearby mosque in the middle of the public meeting.

The Congressis stood up to pay their respects. The Communists continued sitting and looked straight in stony silence.

The “historic” public rally in question was an occasion to mark a last minute “seat-sharing” agreement between the two parties against the indomitable Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress.

At the time too, the alliance was scoffed at because at the same time the Left and the Congress were at each other’s throats in Kerala.

The numbers game, as they played out after that election, didn’t favour either party as the Trinamool swept the 294-seat Assembly with 211 seats.

The Left lost its status as principal opposition, and on the face of it the Congress seemed to gain from the alliance more than the Left.

In 2016, though, the BJP wasn’t as pervasive a force in the state as it is now. For the 2019 General Elections, therefore, the Left and the Congress face a seat-sharing dilemma.

The Raiganj & Murshidabad Problem

In the 2014 election, the Left and the Congress won two and four seats respectively.

But in the two that the Left won – Raiganj and Murshidabad – the winning candidates edged their Congress competitors by a very small margin.

Less than 2,000 votes in Raiganj and 19,000 in Murshidabad.

One of the Congress leaders who lost was Deepa Das Munshi, wife of veteran leader late Priya Ranjan Das Munshi. She held the Raiganj seat from 2009 to 2014, but lost to the CPI(M)’s Mohd Salim in 2014 by just 1,634 votes.

In the initial rounds of talks between the Congress and the Left, it has emerged that the Congress state leadership wants to fight from both these seats this time around as well, while the Left is pushing for the two parties to not contest each other in the six seats that they collectively have.

Bengal Congress Chief Somen Mitra has written to party President Rahul Gandhi, though, expressing the need to share seats with the CPI(M) to consolidate all the “anti-TMC, anti-BJP” votes.

Mitra has also said, however, that it is the “aspirations of the people of Raiganj and Murshidabad” that the Congress fight both seats and that the state Congress is unwilling to relinquish either.

While the state leadership is putting up a strong front with leaders even threatening to “fight alone”, many have also accepted off-record that the Congress just doesn’t have the fire-power in the state to face either the TMC or the BJP.

To make matters worse for the Congress, one of their MPs – Mausam Noor – from the traditionally Congress seat of Malda North, has very recently defected to the TMC. Mamata has promised that she will be the TMC’s candidate from the same seat in these elections.

Internal Opposition Within The Left

For the CPI(M) this has been as much an exercise on keeping the Left Front together, as it has been in negotiating with the Congress.

One of the three other principal parties in the Left Front – The Forward Bloc – was unwilling to leave any of its three Lok Sabha seats for the Congress.

Reservations over allying with the Congress were expressed by the CPI and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) too.

There was a perception amongst the Left allies that the CPI(M) was using its “new-found” love for the Congress at the expense of its traditional allies.

The allies are also citing the example of the 2016 alliance, where the Left votes seemed to have transferred to the Congress, but the Congress votes did not transfer to the Left Front.

As per sources, while the Congress wants to contest about 20 of the 42 seats, the Left is eyeing around 28-30 seats.

Who Is To Gain More: Left Or Congress?

Well, if statistics are to be looked at, in the 2016 Assembly elections, the Left-Congress alliance won 76 seats in a 294-seat Assembly with a combined vote share on 38 percent.

Despite a vote share of 26 percent, the Left performed its worst in 40 years, winning only 32 seats.

The Congress, on the other hand, won 44 seats, and became principal Opposition in the state, in spite of securing just 12 percent votes.

This was a gain of almost 3 percentage points for the Grand Old Party since the previous election, whereas the Left saw its votes fall by almost 11 percentage points.

To compare, the Trinamool’s vote share was around 44 percent that election.

Clearly, therefore, the Congress gained more – though marginally.

Both parties are now in a familiar conundrum as the politics of the central leadership clash with that of parties in the state.