Congress president Sonia Gandhi has agreed to stitch up an alliance with the left parties in the upcoming assembly elections, The Indian Express reported. The decision was taken, according to the report, after a meeting with the Bengal party chief Somen Mitra. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the two parties could not reach an alliance; Congress won two seats and the left parties won zero.
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Sonia Gandhi’s return as the interim president of Congress has emboldened many regional leaders, who were once part of the Congress or were close to her, who later could not accept the leadership of Rahul Gandhi wholeheartedly. Banerjee had spoke to Sonia after she was chosen the interim president, in an attempt to bring the Congress under her control in West Bengal. But, the state Congress had already decided to go for an alliance with the left in the upcoming assembly by-elections, when three seats will go to poll.
Kaliagunj (Malda) in North Bengal was vacated by BJP MLA Khagen Murmu, Kharagpur was vacated by BJP's Dilip Ghosh, and Mahua Moitra of the TMC vacated Karimpore. Two of the three seats are from North Bengal, where BJP swept the last Lok Sabha election.
Will there be a triangular alliance consisting of TMC, Congress and CPI(M) in the upcoming election? The CPI(M) state committee of West Bengal earlier rejected the proposal, saying that the CPI(M) considered TMC “a threat to democracy and secularism like BJP”.
-Inputs from Rabi Banerjee