KOLKATA: The CPM West Bengal state committee members were at loggerheads during a two-day review meeting to discuss the party’s disastrous performance in the recent Assembly elections. As the party failed to send a single representative to the House of 294 lawmakers, most of the leaders blamed it on the decision to join hands with one-month-old outfit Indian Secular Force (ISF).
Many members also expressed their discontent for the party’s alliance with the Congress saying similar tie-up had caused damage to the party in 2016 polls. The Congress had pocketed 44 seats at that time while the Left parties could bag just 26 seats.
In the recent election, the Left Front, Congress and ISF, the outfit floated by an influential Muslim cleric, formed an alliance to consolidate electorates who were against the ruling TMC and the rising BJP. Both the LF and Congress failed to bag a single seat while the ISF won only one out of 27 where it had contested.
“Inclusion of ISF in the alliance was not a unanimous decision. It was Selim (politburo member Mohammad Selim) who had projected the ISF as a progressive force which, in reality, was not. Those who were in favour of joining hands with the new outfit wanted to arrest migration of minority votes to the TMC. The strategy was wrong and electorates did not accept it as CPM has always been vocal of secularism,” said a state committee member.
The alliance also received a set-back as the ISF fielded candidates in some of the seats in Murshidabad against Congress. State Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who was against the inclusion of ISF, had his party did not share seats with the outfit. Incidently, many CPM state committee members had wanted the party to contest in the polls without joining hands with the ISF and Congress.
