Cong’s West Bengal cadre urges high command to go solo in Assembly poll

Congress leaders from West Bengal have advocated to go solo in the Assembly elections instead of opting for an alliance with other political parties in the state before the party high command, The Tribune learnt on Thursday. The Assembly elections in the state are slated to be held next year.

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The Congress had held a crucial meeting, chaired by its top brass -- including party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, former party president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal with the West Bengal leaders at its Indira Bhawan headquarters at Kotla Marg in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The party insiders said intense deliberations were held to revamp the party’s organisational structure in the state. However, the Congress high command has not made any commitment to its West Bengal unit about going solo in the poll, while party leaders and workers were asked to focus their energy on consolidating the party at the grassroots in the state, a source said.

The meeting also brought to fore light internal divisions within the Congress’ West Bengal unit. A source said, former West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was present, but his close associates were conspicuously absent.

On the other hand, party’s current West Bengal president Subhankar Sarkar attended the meeting along with other leaders, including Amitabh Chakraborty, Santosh Pathak, Suman Roychowdhury and Pooja Roychowdhury.

After the culmination of the meeting, West Bengal Congress in-charge GM Mir said, “Today, people of West Bengal are angry due to the shortcomings of the state government and Centre. In such a situation, the Congress has an important role to play. We are ready to represent people of West Bengal in a planned manner.”

West Bengal holds immense significance in the country’s political landscape as it sends the third highest number of MPs (42), after Uttar Pradesh (80) and Maharashtra (48) to Parliament.

Notably, the Congress has lost its pre-eminent position in the state after it was humbled in the 1977 Assembly poll by the Left Front. The grand old party met its nemesis in Mamata Banerjee when she broke away from it and formed the Trinamool Congress in 1998.

The Congress recorded its best-ever tally in West Bengal in the Lok Sabha elections after it lost power in 1977, in 1984, when it won 16 seats with 48 per cent votes, as the party rode a wave in its favour, following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It recorded its second-best performance in 1996, when it won 9 seats and secured 40 per cent votes.

With the formation of the TMC in 1998, a major chunk of the anti-Left votes went to Banerjee’s party.

In the last Lok Sabha elections, the party could manage to win only one seat. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Congress’ then West Bengal chief, himself lost the Baharampur seat to cricketer-turned-politician Yusuf Pathan of the TMC. Chowdhury had been consecutively winning the seat since 1999.