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AIFB reverses decision to contest polls on its own

Special Correspondent

Kolkata: The ruling Left Front in West Bengal was saved considerable embarrassment with the State leadership of the All India Forward Bloc deciding to contest the panchayat polls in May as part of the Left Front. The announcement by the AIFB here on Sunday is a reversal of an earlier move to contest the panchayat elections, on its own.

The Left Front Committee chairman Biman Bose, who is attending the 19th party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Coimbatore, said that he was “happy” with the decision of the State’s AIFB. Mr. Bose said that the Left Front constituents would meet on April 5.

He, along with leaders of the other constituents of the Left Front, had urged the State’s AIFB leadership to reconsider its move to go it alone in the rural polls.

The general secretary of the State Committee of the AIFB, Ashok Ghosh, said the decision to contest the elections as part of the Left Front was for the sake of Left unity and with the purpose of defeating the rightist, imperialist and communal forces.

“This is not to say that our earlier decision to go it alone that was taken at a meeting of the party’s State Council in December 2007 was wrong,” he pointed out.

The AIFB had broken out of the Left Front in Tripura and contested the Assembly elections there last month on its own. The party, however, failed to win a single seat.

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