Congress, Left Front to set up joint platform to protest fuel price hike

Kolkata: After the 2019 Lok Sabha poll debacle, where the Congress and Left Front jointly fought against the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and lost all their seats, they are once again set to come together and form a common platform to protest against the consistent sharp rise in the fuel price over the past 19 days.

Left Front chairman Biman Bose, CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Misra, WBPCC president Somen Mitra, Pradip Bhattacharya,

Manoj Bhattacharya, state secretary of RSP will take part in a rally which will be held on Red Road.

Congress and Left Front will fight jointly in 2021 Assembly election. The platform will go to the people and campaign against the misrule of BJP-led Centre and Trinamool Congress led state government.

A meeting between the Left Front partners and Congress was held at Kranti Press, state RSP headquarters on Wednesday.

WBPCC president Somen Mitra was present in the meeting.

It was learnt that CPI(M) does not have any objection in the setting up of a joint forum. The platform will formulate a common minimum programme and will tell people why the formation of the platform is the need of

the hour.

It may be mentioned that Congress and CPI(M) had fought the 2016 Assembly election jointly despite objection from its partners that include RSP, Forward Bloc and CPI. CPI(M) had got only 22 seats, the lowest since 1972 and the Left Front collectively got only 32 seats.

Congress had got 42 seats. Not only the people of Bengal did not accept the alliance after the election results were out the CPI(M) Politburo had issued a statement which stated: "The alliance was not in consonance with the decision of the Central Committee of the party."

In 2019, Lok sabha election CPI(M) and Congress fought jointly and only Bikas Bhattacharya, now CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP could save his deposit from the Jadavpur Parliamentary seat while the deposit of all the Left Front candidates was for fitted.

In 2019 Lok Sabha poll, Congress was ahead of Trinamool Congress only in six Assembly segments in Murshidabad and Malda.

Political experts said the alliance between Congress and CPI(M) was a failure both in 2016 Assembly election and 2019 Lok Sabha election and only time will say whether the people have accepted it or not.

CPI(M) had transferred 20 per cent of its vote share to other parties in

2019 Lok Sabha poll and it is very important to see how it regains its lost support base, they maintained.