Cong not invited to Left Front’s protest march as gulf widens

The alliance between CPI(M) and Congress received a jolt on Friday with the Left Front not inviting the latter to join its movement scheduled to be held on June 26. LF will organise “March to Dharmatala” to protest against the escalating price hike of essential commodities. It may be recalled that earlier, the Left Front partners had told the chairman Biman Bose in its meeting held last week that they would quit if Congress was invited to join LF programmes. Accordingly, no invitation was sent to Congress. 

The incident has taken place at a time when Congress and CPI(M) have decided to move jointly on the floor of Assembly. Political experts said the decision of the LF would create further confusion among the people. The confusion over the alliance which started before the election was not yet over and is getting complicated day by day.

They felt such confusion would affect interest of both the parties and would benefit Trinamool Congress. Meanwhile, the one day meeting of Politburo ended in Delhi on Friday. The leaders from West Bengal, Biman Bose, Mohammad Selim, Surya Kanta Misra and Hannan Mollah have gone to attend the meeting.

The Politburo in a statement issued on 30 May had clearly stated that the poll strategy in West Bengal was not in consonance with the decision of the Central Committee. The Central Committee will have a three day meeting starting from Saturday.

Party insiders said the Politburo’s decision would be discussed in the CC along with the reports submitted to all the states including West Bengal regarding the election. In West Bengal, the party did badly having only 26 MLAs, worst since 1972 when the party had 14 legislators.

Party insiders maintained that Surya Kanta Misra’s statement before party leaders in the two day state committee meeting held on June 11 and 12 that it had faced debacle because of poor organisation and not because the alliance was not acceptable to the central committee members.

As Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have more members against the alliance, West Bengal leaders were likely to be cornered in the three day meeting.