Bengal Assembly polls: AISF not ready to settle below 40 seats, Left Front's maximum offer is 32

Kolkata, Feb 13 (IANS) The possible seat-sharing arrangement between the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the All India Secular Front (AISF) for the Assembly elections in West Bengal scheduled later this year is caught in the middle of numerical negotiations between the two parties.

On one hand, the AISF is not ready to settle below 40 seats of the total of 294 Assembly constituencies in the state. On the other hand, the maximum offer from the CPI(M)-led Left Front is 32.

A central committee member of the CPI(M) said that on Thursday, a marathon meeting on this seat-sharing arrangement was conducted at the party's state headquarters at Alimuddin Street in central Kolkata.

The meeting was attended, among others, by the chairman of the Left Front in West Bengal, Biman Bose, and the lone AISF representative in the West Bengal Assembly, Nawsad Siddique.

"In the meeting, the AISF leadership clearly said that while they would like to field their candidates for 44 minority-dominated Assembly constituencies, under no circumstances would they settle for fewer than 40 seats," the central committee member said.

However, the CPI(M) also told AISF that, given that there will have to be an acceptable seat distribution among different allies in the Left Front, at the most 32 seats could be allotted to AISF, and that too not necessarily all the seats of AISF’s first choice.

AISFs argument is that since Congress had already decided to walk out of any seat-sharing agreement with Left Front for the Assembly elections this year, there would not be much of a problem for Left Front to meet AISF's demand for at least 40 seats.

"Had Congress been a party of the seat-sharing arrangement this time, their demand in the share of seats would have been much more," pointed out an AISF leader,

CPI(M)'s counter-logic is that by the same formula of Congress not being a part of the arrangement this time, the other allies in the Left Front, namely CPI, Revolutionary Socialist Party, and All India Forward Bloc are also demanding more seats this time.

In the last West Bengal Assembly elections in 2021, the Left Front, Congress, and AISF got united under the umbrella body of 'Sanjukta Morcha' (United Front).

However, AISF broke out of the arrangement in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, while Congress and Left Front continued with their seat-sharing arrangements.