West Bengal Polls: Identity Politics Gaining Ground As Cong-Left-ISF Brigade Plans To Take On TMC, BJP

The state politics hogged massive limelight soon after the Left-Congress-ISF alliance was announced and a massive rally was organised at Kolkata’s iconic Brigade Parade Ground on Sunday to display the show of strength as West Bengal's third contesting front

Kolkata: Surging past the phase of political battle, the West Bengal Assembly elections have now become a contest of idiologies and a communally charged electoral battle with fare share of identity politics for the first time in history of independent India. It all started with the entry of newly formed Indian Secular Front (ISF) led by Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui, who became the first religious leader in West Bengal to take the political plunge.

The state politics hogged massive limelight soon after the Left-Congress-ISF alliance was announced and a massive rally was organised at Kolkata’s iconic Brigade Parade Ground on Sunday to display the show of strength as West Bengal's third contesting front after ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  

However, cracks and difference of opinion was witnessed within the Congress itself over alliance with ISF, with senior party leaders saying that the core ideology cannot be compromised. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma objected to the Left-Congress-ISF alliance saying that grand old party cannot be selective in fighting communalists but must do so in all its manifestations.

"Congress' alliance with parties like ISF and other such forces militates against the core ideology of the party and Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism, which forms the soul of the party. These issues need to be approved by the CWC," Sharma said. 

Currently, the Left and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) are in talks with the Congress over seat sharing arrangements in the poll-bound Bengal.

However, Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha and state president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury defended the alliance and even got engaged in war of words with Sharma. Chowdhry replied to Anand Sharma on Twitter. "Know ur facts @AnandSharmaINC ji", he wrote.

Not just Left-Congress-ISF alliance, but even BJP and the ruling TMC have been tering into each other in fierce polarising debate of fanning communal sentiments in West Bengal, where the electoral discourse hitherto steered clear of divisive religious propaganda. 

Meanwhile, even the leaders of TMC and the BJP thinks West Bengal assembly elections will be different from the ones we have witnessed since independence. The BJP leadership agreed that communal polarisation was on the rise in the state, but blamed appeasement politics by the TMC for it.

"For us the election plank happens to be 'development for all'. That said, appeasement politics and injustice towards the state's majority community by the TMC government has indeed led to communal polarisation in Bengal," BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said.

Elections in West Bengal, poised to be a stiff contest between the TMC and the BJP, will be held in eight phases, will begin with polling for 30 seats on March 27. Votes will be counted on May 2.