Opinion - News Analysis   

A consensus remains elusive in West Bengal

Marcus Dam

With the main Opposition parties yet to forge an alliance, the Left appears set to benefit.

WITH THE first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections just a month away, the State's two major non-Left parties — the Trinamool Congress and the Congress — have begun blaming each other for not keeping the anti-Left vote in the State undivided.

Neither party may have quite given up hope as yet, even though the leaders have started admitting the improbability of arriving at seat adjustments. They seem to be resigning themselves to the eventuality of their nominees being pitted against each other.

Their main rival — the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — is, however, not quite convinced that the attempts at forging an alliance have been abandoned. Behind all this finger-pointing between the Congress and the Trinamool, covert attempts at a tacit electoral understanding continue to be made, the CPI(M) maintains.

Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee on Thursday threatened to field candidates against the Congress in seats set aside for it if that party did not reconsider its decision to go it alone.

This was a day after the Congress declared it would wait until the filing of nominations for the Trinamool to part ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party — the Congress' condition for a tie-up.

Mamata's offer

Hoping to keep alive the fading prospect of an anti-Left mahajot (grand alliance), Ms. Banerjee had earlier this week announced that her party and its allies would put up candidates for 201 of the 294 seats in the State. She had `set aside' 53 seats for the Congress, promising to increase the figure if the latter finally agreed to an electoral understanding.

What she is not willing to do, she maintains, is leave the NDA for the sake of forging an alliance with the Congress. Her argument is that the issue at hand is ensuring a "one-to-one contest" with the Left parties — irrespective of whether the Trinamool is in the NDA or the Congress continues with Left support at the Centre.

Not that the Congress did not go out of its way to appease Ms. Banerjee and get her to change her mind on leaving the NDA. Senior leaders such as Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also the State Congress president, and Margaret Alva, entrusted with special charge of West Bengal had, in their own ways, tried.

An olive branch had even been offered: Ms. Banerjee could also lead an electoral alliance of the two parties.

The Trinamool leader, who had gone in for such an understanding with the Congress in the last Assembly elections, has, however, refused to budge.

Ms. Banerjee might have given the BJP reason to be aggrieved by keeping aside only 23 seats for it to contest (with the promise of a few more) but remains adamant in contesting the polls as an NDA constituent. Overtures from the Congress to reconsider have failed to cut ice.

As for the Congress, "party policy dictates there we can have no truck with communal parties like the BJP."

Arithmetically speaking, the Left stands to gain with a division in the votes polled against it even though its leadership remains dismissive of any alliance involving the Congress and the Trinamool — not to talk of a mahajot.

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