Ally ISF not communal force: CPI(M)

KOLKATA: Amid allegations that the Left parties have joined hands with a communal force by forming an alliance with the Indian Secular Front (ISF) for winning the assembly elections in West Bengal, the CPI(M) has contended that the fledgeling party is different from fundamentalist communal forces.

The ISF was floated by Abbas Siddiqui, an influential Muslim cleric of Hooghly district’s Furfura Sharif, last month. The Left Front has agreed to leave for the ISF 30 seats as part of the LeftCongress-ISF

grand alliance. Seat sharing talks are on between the ISF and the Congress.

CPI(M) West Bengal general secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said that the alliance has been formed not with an eye on the elections only, but also for a long-term fight for lives and livelihoods of people and secularism, and against attacks on democracy. Both the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP have claimed that the Left Front has joined hands with “a communal force” like the ISF.

In an interview published in Thursdays edition of ‘Ganashakti’, the Bengali mouthpiece of the CPI(M), Mishra said, “The ISF is not a communal force. It is different from fundamentalist communal forces.” Claiming that the huge turnout at the Brigade Parade Ground rally has muddled the calculations of the TMC and the BJP, he asserted that the ISF speaks of people belonging to Scheduled Castes, other backward classes, minority communities and also upper caste Hindus and Adivasis.

The Left-Congress-ISF alliance kicked off its campaign for the upcoming assembly elections in Bengal with a mega rally at the Brigade Parade Ground.