Lok Sabha Elections 2024: CPM goes against Netaji's party to seek votes for Congress in Purulia

Kolkata: They stuck together through thick and thin for almost five decades, ruling West Bengal from 1977 to 2011 and then fighting for survival and revival of the respective party organisations in the past 13 years since yielding power to the Trinamool Congress.

But the 47-year-old alliance between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the All-India Forward Bloc (AIFB) – the party founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose – has now not only come under stress in West Bengal but also reached a breaking point in at least one parliamentary constituency of West Bengal – Purulia.

The CPI(M) – for the first time since 1977 – deployed its party machinery in Purulia to campaign against the AIFB’s candidate, Dhirendra Nath Mahato, and to seek votes for Nepal Mahato of the Congress.

Dhirendra, however, remained unfazed and insisted that whatever happened between the Left Front and the Congress was not an alliance, but only an understanding. He argued that the CPI(M) had negotiated with the Congress, but no other constituents of the Left Front had been involved in working out the understanding.

The CPI(M), however, argued that the alliance with the Congress was necessary to fight the BJP and save the nation from the saffron party’s misrule and divisive policies.

With its survival at stake, the CPI(M) is relying on its alliance with the Congress for a revival in West Bengal. Though most of its allies in the Left Front, a bloc it had constituted with six other leftist parties in January 1977, have accepted its alliance with the Congress, the AIFB has been steadfastly opposing it.

The AIFB insisted on fielding its own candidates in the Barasat, Cooch Behar, and Purulia parliamentary constituencies of the state. The CPI (M) and the Congress agreed to leave the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency for the AIFB. But the CPI (M) failed to make the Congress withdraw its candidate from Cooch Behar in support of the AIFB’s nominee. It also failed to make the AIFB withdraw its candidate from Purulia for the benefit of the nominee of the Congress. The CPI (M) decided to support the AIFB’s candidate in Cooch Behar and the Congress’s in Purulia.

The AIFB traces its roots to the Forward Bloc, which emerged as an entity led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose within the Indian National Congress in 1939. It later turned into an independent political party after the Independence in 1947.

Though it once had several stalwarts, not only from West Bengal but from other states too, as its representatives in Parliament, the AIFB’s political clout has been on the decline over the years. Its vote share dropped from 0.35% in 2004 to 0.05% in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and from 4.80% in 2011 to 0.53% in the 2021 state assembly polls. It now has only a few panchayat members in the state.

Notwithstanding the CPI(M)’s campaign against him, Dhirendra is relying on the political legacies of the AIFB leaders like Chitta Maharto and Bir Singh Mahato, who had represented Purulia in the Lok Sabha between 1977 and 2014.

The Congress is contesting for 14 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal, while the CPI (M) has fielded its nominees in 23 constituencies. The CPI (M)’s allies Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) are contesting for two and three seats respectively.

Despite hiccups in some constituencies, the Congress and the CPI (M) leaders are trying to make the alliance work. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC), recently had a joint press conference with the CP(M) veteran and Left Front chairman Biman Bose – a first of kind move by the two sides in the political history of West Bengal. Chowdhury also accompanied CPI (M) state secretary Mohammad Salim when he went to file the nominations to contest as the communist party’s candidate in the Murshidabad LS constituency. The CPI(M) also reciprocated on Wednesday and sent its firebrand youth wing chief Minakshi Mukherjee to accompany Chowdhury when he filed his nomination to contest as the Congress’s candidate in Baharampur LS constituency.