The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leadership, including party’s West Bengal State Secretary Mohamed Salim, on Thursday joined the Congress party’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Murshidabad district. The development assumes significance as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has maintained that her party will go it alone in the Lok Sabha polls. The Trinamool Congress chairperson has been targeting the Congress for allying with “her enemy”, the CPI(M).
“Bengal will show the path to uproot the BJP from the Centre. Our party will contest in the Lok Sabha polls alone. We wanted to share seats but the Congress did not respond. I agreed to give them two seats but they wanted more. The CPI(M) has joined hands with the Congress to help the BJP,” Ms. Banerjee said on Thursday while addressing a gathering in State’s Nadia district.
Show of solidarity
The CPI(M) leadership met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the neighbouring Murshidabad district. “We have come here to express our solidarity. Our presence in the yatra is an expression that we are in favour of justice and against injustice,” Mr. Salim said. The meeting has taken place a day before the yatra entered Jharkhand.
During the day, as the yatra marched through Murshidabad, the CPI(M) flags were seen along with the Congress flags. The Congress and the CPI(M) have been in electoral alliance since 2016 , even though it brought little electoral success in West Bengal. Earlier, the CPI(M) leaders from Darjeeling district had joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Covering 523 km across six West Bengal districts, the yatra has travelled Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad during the second phase of the event.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress leaders took at swipe at the bonhomie between the Congress and the CPI(M).
“The Congress has forgotten that it was the CPI(M) that branded Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother Indira Gandhi as a witch. In the graffiti, they portrayed his father Rajiv Gandhi as a thief. Time will decide the fate of the alliance,” Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh added.
