New Delhi:
The CPI(M)-led Left Front announced its first list of candidates for 25 seats in West Bengal for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on Friday.The CPI(M) had declared its candidates for these two constituencies earlier.
West Bengal has 42 parliamentary seats and the remaining 17 constituencies would be contested either by the Left Front or the Congress, Left Front chairman Biman Bose said."In some seats, there could be candidates jointly supported by the Congress and the Left Front," he added.
The CPI(M) and the Congress have agreed on a seat-sharing arrangement in the state.The 25 seats include Raiganj and Murshidabad, currently held by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The CPI(M) had declared its candidates for these two constituencies earlier.
Miffed over the CPI(M)'s unilateral announcement, Congress' Bengal unit chief Somen Mitra had accused the Left Front of not being keen on having an alliance.
The announcement not only led to breakdown in the seat-sharing discussions between the two sides, but also paved way for a four-cornered contest in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The seats, won by the CPI(M) by a slender margin in a four-cornered contest, are known to be Congress bastions.
While North Dinajpur's Raiganj has been a pocket borough of Congress stalwart Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, Murshidabad's politics has been dominated by the party's firebrand leader Adhir Chowdhury, who is also a vociferous supporter of the alliance with the Left.
The seven-phased Lok Sabha polls will be held from April 11 to May 19 and the counting of votes will be taken up on May 23. West Bengal will go to the polls in all the seven phases.
