CPI-M adopts new strategy to select candidates for upcoming Bengal civic body polls

Kolkata: The CPI-M, the lead party in the Left Front in West Bengal, has adopted a new strategy for selection of candidates for the forthcoming elections for different urban civic bodies in the state, including municipal corporations and municipalities, scheduled by the end of the current calendar year.

The state leadership had decided to leave the finalisation of the seat-sharing formula among existing Left Front allies to its district committees, instead of the state Committee charting out a straightjacket formula. The district committees will also be tasked with the choice of candidates for the civic body polls instead of the state leadership interfering in the matter.

However, if any district committee feels the necessity of an alliance with any political force outside the Left Front, this will have to be done in concurrence with the state committee, a CPI-M Central Committee member said.

At the same time, the Central Committe leader stressed that both the party’s Central and state leadership feel that under no circumstance any of the district committees will be allowed to enter into any kind of understanding with any of the three current factions in Trinamool Congress, the first led by former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, second by the expelled Trinamool Congress legislator, Ritabrata Banerjee, and the third comprising the band of 20 Trinamool Lok Sabha members who have joined the virtually non-existence NCPI.

"Already, we have been receiving feelers from some of these factions about some district-level seat-sharing understandings. But our answer to them is definitely no. Our current target is to regain the principal opposition space in West Bengal and the forthcoming urban civic body polls are the best opportunity to at least begin that exercise. At the same time, we will not accept any understanding with any force who have been thoroughly rejected by the people of the state and thereafter lost credibility because of this factionalism," the Central Committee member said.

Meanwhile, a state Secretariat member said the prospect of any understanding with the Congress is more or less out of the question. "In the 2026 Assembly polls, it was Congress leadership which unilaterally announced snapping of the past electoral arrangements with the Left Front. So, there is hardly any possibility of regaining that understanding in the forthcoming urban civic body polls. Again, it is better that we contest independently as Left Front, so that in that exercise we will understand where we stand," the Secretariat member said.

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