Kolkata, February 24 – Despite a significant agreement between the All India Secular Front (AISF) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) here on Tuesday, the Left Front in West Bengal and the AISF were unable to reach a seat-sharing agreement for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections, which are scheduled to be held later this year.
The meeting, which was attended by AISF MLA Nawas Siddique, Left Front Chairman Biman Bose, and CPI-M Politburo member and West Bengal unit Secretary, Mohammed Salim, saw the AISF demanding 45 seats, while the Left Front proposed limiting the number to 30.
"We will have another round of discussions on this matter on Wednesday. We are hopeful that a mutually agreeable arrangement will finally be reached," Siddique said at the end of the meeting.
Meanwhile, a member of the Central Committee of the CPI-M said that the main obstacle within the Left Front to reaching an amicable seat-sharing agreement with the AISF is the All India Forward Bloc, which is demanding a larger share of Assembly seats, considering that the Congress had already withdrawn from any seat-sharing agreement with the Left Front.
"If the demands of both the AISF and the Forward Bloc are met, then the CPI-M would contest the upcoming state elections with a much smaller number of seats, after meeting the demands of the other two Left Front allies, namely the CPI and the Revolutionary Socialist Party. However, there is a limit to how much the CPI-M can sacrifice its own share in the seat-sharing arrangement," the party's Central Committee member said.
On the other hand, the AISF argues that, since the Congress had already decided to withdraw from any seat-sharing agreement with the Left Front for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections, it would not be a problem for the Left Front to meet the AISF's demand for at least 40 seats.
"If the Congress had been a part of this seat-sharing arrangement, their demand for a larger share of seats would have been much greater," an AISF leader said.
