In a shocker for Bengal politics, the Congress party on Monday announced to contest the bypolls of two parliamentary and one Assembly seats alone, thus putting an end to the longstanding alliance between CPM and Congress.
Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury , pointed out that the CPM has already declared its candidates for the bypolls “unilaterally.”
“As soon as the bypolls were announced, the Left Front announced their candidates. Since they did so without any discussions with us, we take it that they want to contest alone. In such case, we too would pitch our candidates. We have prepared our list of candidates and sent it to the AICC for approval. AICC will take the final call,” Chowdhury said.
The Left Front had declared its candidates for all three poll-bound constituencies last week and even though the Congress has avoided a direct reply, analysts have termed it as the end of the “honeymoon period” between the two parties.
The Lok Sabha seats of Tamluk and Cooch Behar and Monteswar Assembly seat would go to the polls on November 19. The bypoll to Cooch Behar and Monteswar seats were necessitated following the deaths of Trinamool Congress MP Renuka Sinha and MLA Sajal Panja, respectively. The bypoll to Tamluk Lok Sabha seat was necessitated after TMC MP Suvendu Adhikari won the Nandigram Assembly seat and became a state minister.
