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Kolkata, Oct 17 (IANS) India Secular Front (ISF)’s lone MLA in the state assembly Navsad Siddiqui on Friday said the ISF, which had a seat-sharing deal with the Congress and the CPI-M-led Left Front in the 2021 West Bengal elections, has not yet received any response from the Left Front leadership on its proposal to initiate similar talks for the state elections next year.
According to the ISF MLA, he had sent a letter to state CPI-M secretary Biman Bose in August this year requesting him to initiate talks for seat-sharing arrangements for the upcoming assembly elections.
He said he did not receive any specific response to his proposal, though he was assured that discussions on seat-sharing would be initiated after Durga Puja, which had already ended in the first week of October.
A seat-sharing agreement was struck between the ISF, Congress and the Left Front during the 2021 state assembly elections, in which neither the Left Front nor the Congress could send a single representative to the assembly, while Siddiqui emerged as the lone MLA from the alliance to win a seat.
However, in 2024, although there was a seat-sharing arrangement in West Bengal between the Congress and the Left Front, the ISF contested the elections independently.
Barring a letter from ISF’s Navsad Siddiqui to Viman Bose, none of the three parties have come forward to initiate talks on seat arrangements for the upcoming assembly elections.
Statements made by leaders of both Congress and CPI-M have raised doubts over whether there will be a seat-sharing arrangement during the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.
CPI-M politburo member and party state secretary, MD Saleem, had earlier said that it was for the Congress leadership to decide whether they wanted a seat-sharing arrangement with the Left Front or not.
On the other hand, state Congress president Subhankar Sarkar said that although the final decision on the seat-sharing arrangement will be taken by the party high command in New Delhi, most of the district-level party leaders in the state want the Congress to contest the elections on its own this time without any seat-sharing.
–IANS
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