The sheer desperation of CPM is evident when it collaborated with CPIML (Liberation) to field candidates for the ensuing by-election in six Assembly seats.

The by-elections will be held on 13 November. The seats fell vacant after the respective MLA resigned and contested in the Lok Sabha election in 2024 and got elected.

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The CPM has backed CPIML (Liberation) candidate Debjyoti Majumdar in Naihati. In Sitai, Forward Bloc has fielded Arun Kumar Burma. In Medinipur, the CPI candidate is Manikuntal Khamrui while in Madarihat RSP has fielded Padam Oraon. The CPM has fielded Debkanti Mahanti. In Haora, CPM is holding talks with ISF and the latter may nominate its candidate.

The hollowness of CPM is revealed when it failed to ink an alliance with Congress. In 2016, CPM had an electoral alliance with Congress in the Assembly election. The left party got only 26 seats and the Left Front got only 32 seats. After the results were out, the Politburo of CPM had issued an communiqué, which stated that the alliance was not in consonance with the central committee’s decision, which had said that the party would maintain equidistant from both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Interestingly, both the central committee and Politburo of CPM had supported the alliance and after the party’s poll debacle had refused to hold any responsibility.

In the 2021 Assembly election, the CPM-Congress alliance was a big disaster as CPM and Congress failed to get a single seat in the Assembly.

Historically, the CPM is an arch rival of the CPIML, commonly known as Naxals. During the Naxalite movement in Bengal from 1968 to 1971, it was alleged that the CPM cadres had passed on information to the police to arrest the Naxalites. CPM was mortally scared of the Naxalites because of the brilliance of the young leaders. Both Ashim Chatterjee and Dipanjan Roy Chowdhury were brilliant students of Presidency College.

Both were intellectually far more advanced than Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Shyamal Chrkraborty, Shyamal Chakraborty or Dinesh Majumdar.

Many brilliant students of Presidency College had joined the movement and got killed in police firing.

After coming to power in 1977, CPM had maintained distance with the CPIML. But sheer desperation of the party has forced it to ink an electoral alliance with the CPIML (Liberation).