With the Left Front’s announcement on Thursday of a second list of 84 candidates for the 294-seat Bengal Assembly, the Front-Congress alliance suffered a major setback as the latter had announced candidates for 14 of these seats on Tuesday.
The Left Front announced its own candidates for 11 of these and has left three others for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Janata Dal (United) (JD[U]).
The Left Front and the Congress had entered into a “seat sharing understanding”, publicly announcing that they would not pit candidates against each other to ensure that a consensus candidate obtains the anti-Trinamool vote. But the Left Front’s announcement on Thursday has severely annoyed the Congress’ State leadership.
One of the senior leaders negotiating seats with the Left, Rajya Sabha MP Pradip Bhattacharya, said the Front’s second list will have a “severe negative impact on the Left-Congress alliance.”
“A calculated move to create political misunderstanding is being undertaken by the Left parties. This is extremely unfortunate. I am having severe doubts about the Left's goodwill in sustaining the alliance,” Mr Bhattacharya said.
