Updated: December 24, 2020, 9:03:27 pm
Congress President Rahul Gandhi with CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury in Jantar Mantar on Thursday. (Express photo by Tashi Tobgyal)
To conquer his long-lost ground in West Bengal in the upcoming general election in the state, Congress on Thursday officially announced its alliance with the left front. Both parties will stand against the ruling Trinamool Congress and an aggressive BJP that made significant strides during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Bengal. After the 2016 assembly elections, the left-wing parties and Congress saw massive erosion of their support bases, with most of their base moving en masse into the TMC. The left and Congress did not contest the Lok Sabha elections in Bengal together. This is what happened to them in the previous elections:
In the polls of the Bengali Assembly in 2016, the Left Front and Congress together won 76 out of 294 seats in West Bengal after reaching 38 percent of the vote. The Left Front got 26 percent of the vote while Congress got just 12 percent. Despite such a small percentage of the vote, Congress won 44 seats while the Left Front only got 32 seats, with CPI-M taking 26 seats, RSP 3, CPI 1 and Forward Bloc 2. The Trinamool Congress under Mamata Banerjee won 211 seats and 44.91 percent of the votes are re-elected with an increased majority. BJP received three seats with 10.16 percent of the vote.
In the 2011 general election, TMC had won 184 seats and received 38.93 percent of the vote. She had conducted the polls in alliance with Congress and SUCI (C), which won 42 seats and 1 seat, respectively, and increased the number to 227. The left front was reduced to just 62 seats while BJP did not open its account.
In the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, the Left Front had not won a single seat and lost bailouts in 39 constituencies with just 6.34 percent of the vote, while Congress only took two seats and 5.67 percent of the vote and lost bailouts in 38 constituencies . On the flip side, the BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats and 40.64 percent, just four behind TMC’s 22 seats with 43.69 percent of the vote, and established itself as a formidable force in the Bengal political arena.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd.