Indian Secular Front (ISF) wants 14 seats including Jadavpur or Diamond Harbour (DH) across West Bengal to contest Lok Sabha (LS) elections, virtually delaying its ally CPM-led Left Front (LF) to announce its list of candidates.
Apart from the Trinamul Congress, the main opposition party in the state, BJP has also announced names of candidates in 20 seats in the first list.
The CPM could not release its list of candidates so far because of the crisis in connection with seat sharing issues with its electoral allies, Congress and ISF, still remain unsolved.
Sources in CPM said that the ISF leadership has proposed Alimuddin Street to offer them 14 parliamentary constituencies like Uluberia, Barasat, Basirhat, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur and Joynagar, dominated mainly by minority voters.
The LF chairman, Biman Bose has held talks with ISF secretary Biswajit Maiti to discuss seat sharing in the LS election.
Sources in the ISF said the party wants to field candidates in 14 constituencies, including Jadavpur and DH considering two aspects. First, minorities are dominating voters in these seats where the party’s poll prospects are bright as compared with results of panchayat polls in 2023.
Mr Siddiqui is the sole ISF MLA from Bhangar Assembly that falls under the Jadavpur LS constituency.
The ISF has strengthened its organizational base in Bhangar and other adjoining areas under Jadavpur, an insider of the party said, adding, “We are eyeing Jadavpur and DH out of the 14 seats.”
But the CPM leadership is not willing to give Jadavpur to ISF and Alimuddin Street has plans to field Sreejan Bhattacharya, former SFI state secretary, there in Jadavpur, once the Left citadel.
“We are in regular talks with the CPM to discuss seat sharing, demanding several seats for us. We won’t divulge exactly how many seats we have wanted from them. We want to field our candidates in constituencies where our poll prospects are brighter than others,” Naushad Siddiqui, sole ISF MLA, told The Statesman.
“We want to fight LS polls together with parties, who are against both BJP and Trinamul Congress. Our party leaders will sit again with CPM to discuss electoral understating,” he said.
“My party leadership will decide whether I will contest from Diamond Harbour or elsewhere,” the ISF MLA said.
Earlier, he had expressed his desire to contest from Diamond Harbour LS seat against sitting Trinamul Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.
An insider in the CPM said most of the seats demanded by ISF belong to LF partners like Forward Bloc and RSP. “We will discuss the ISF proposal with our partners and nothing can be done in this regard now,” he said, requesting anonymity.