Left Front fails to iron out creases with ISF in Bengal
The Left Front’s attempts to forge an electoral understanding with the Indian Secular Front (ISF) for the Lok Sabha poll in West Bengal fell flat on Thursday, with the latter announcing candidates for 14 seats.
However, ISF MLA Naushad Siddique, who had earlier made tall claims about contesting from the Diamond Harbour seat against Trinamool Congress’s Abhishek Banerjee, backed out of the contest. The party has fielded Majnu Laskar from the seat. It has also nominated a candidate, Noor Alam Khan, from Jadavpur, where the Left Front has fielded Srijan Bhattacharya. While Mozammel Haque will contest as ISF candidate from Balurghat, Mofiqul Islam is the party’s nominee from Uluberia, and lawyer Jamir Hossain is in fray from Barrackpore. Announcing the candidates, ISF leader Naushad Siddique blamed the Left Front, saying that his party wanted the alliance to materialise but “it seemed those who talk about secular alternatives have people from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in their midst”.
In Bengal, the Left Front has a seatsharing arrangement with the Congress as part of the Opposition’s INDIA coalition. It also had a separate seatsharing agreement with the ISF since the 2021 Assembly poll.
Seat sharing
It is believed while the Left Front leadership appeared keen on having a prepoll understanding with the ISF for Lok Sabha poll, State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury didn’t take much interest in reaching out to the party that was launched by influential Bengali cleric Abbas Siddiqui in 2021.
The Congress and the Left Front have come to an electoral understanding on majority of the seats, with the former having announced candidates for 23 seats and the latter declaring nominees on seven. Although the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is also a part of the INDIA bloc, it is going solo for all 42 seats in the State. Political observers feel that the ISF fielding candidates separately will help the TMC, which was sceptical about the former eating into the Muslim votes.