Congress to ally with Left parties in Bengal Assembly Election 2021

Bengal, Dec 23: The Congress formally announced its tie-up with the Left parties for the upcoming West Bengal assembly election in 2021 on Thursday.

West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took Twitter to announce the news. “Today the Congress high command has formally approved the electoral alliance with the Left parties in the impending election of West Bengal,” he tweeted.

West Bengal, along with Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, and Puducherry, will go to the polls in March-April next year.

The central committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had in October approved the West Bengal unit’s decision to have an electoral understanding with all secular parties, including the Congress, in the upcoming assembly elections.

The CPI (M) political bureau had given its go-ahead to the move but had left the final decision to the central committee.

In the 2016 Assembly election, the central committee of the CPI (M) had rejected the West Bengal unit’s decision to have a tactical seat-sharing understanding with the Congress. In the subsequent elections, the Congress won 44 seats and the Left Front ended up with just 32.