CPI(M) and Congress: Adversary in Kerala, friend in Bengal

It is an electoral gamble for the two main opposition parties in West Bengal. While former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya seems keen on an alliance with the Congress, the state leadership of the grand old party isn't in a hurry to cement the bond. Certain sections within the Congress are opposed to the alliance, but the overall mood favours a tie-up. Moreover, the party wants Rahul Gandhi's approval for the alliance. Now, however, the ball is in Sonia Gandhi’s court. But the question is will this combine have an impact on the upcoming assembly elections? There are no simple calculations in a political game. One needs to analyse the results of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from the perspective of assembly constituencies to measure the alliance's effect in the 2016 polls. By that logic — keeping the assembly constituencies in mind in the 2014 general elections results — the Trinamool Congress secured 39.8% of the total votes polled in the state and 214 assembly seats. For the Left Front, it was 29.9 % votes and 28 seats; for BJP: 17.06% votes and 24 assembly seats and lastly, the Congress with 9.7% vote-share and 28 seats. If this pattern were to remain unchanged, then the combined vote-share of the Left and the Congress would take the alliance's seat tally beyond 100 in the forthcoming assembly polls.

Similarly for the TMC, it would result in 179 seats, and for the BJP 18 seats. So, it is clear that the Congress-Left tie-up shouldn't bother the TMC so much.

However, there is a catch. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP in Bengal gained from the nationwide Narendra Modi wave. This time, in the absence of such euphoria, its vote-share is likely to fall drastically. If those votes were to travel to the Left-Congress camp, and if there is a decline in TMC vote-share owing to the alliance, then Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's party has much to worry about.

During her recent visit to New Delhi, Mamata met Sonia. The buzz is she might have told the Congress supremo that if her party steers clear of an alliance with the Left in Bengal, the TMC will support the Congress in both houses of Parliament till the next general elections. Now Sonia will have to decide whether she wants to jeopardise her party's national interests for gains in Bengal polls.

While Sonia is fond of Mamata and opposed to a tie-up, Rahul's dislike for the TMC chief is palpable. Sonia's views on the alliance are also shaped by past events when the CPI-M-led Left Front withdrew support from UPA-I.
However, Rahul now wants to replicate the Bihar-alliance model in other states and give more importance to regional satraps.

If the alliance has to be successful, then the grass-roots workers of both parties have to bury the hatchet. The Left and the Congress have a long history of violence in Bengal. But with TMC loyalists flexing muscles, it has now become a struggle for survival for Congress and Left activists. CPI-M leaders have said that if the RJD and JD(U) can rise above their differences to fight the BJP in Bihar, the Left and Congress too can put up a united front against the TMC. But this equation can affect both parties in Kerala which too is going to the polls this year, and where the two are locked in a bitter power struggle. In Kerala there is a surge in people's support for the Left front due to which CPI-M state secretary P Vijayan is trying to dissuade the party's central leadership from forming an alliance in West Bengal.

With the stakes so high, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will have to weigh their options carefully.

The author is a senior journalist