The North Dinajpur district Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist have decided to stand united against the ruling Trinamul Congress in the upcoming rural elections in the state.
According to records of the submission of nomination papers, both the parties had already planed an alliance before they filed their nomination papers for the threetier elections.
On the other hand, Congress leaders have confirmed that they have already formed an electoral alliance union with the CPIM to fight the TMC. A total of 1649 gram panchayat seats are up for grabs in North Dinajpur district, where the CPI-M has filed nominations for 700 seats and their Left Front partners, AIFB, RSP and CPI candidates have filed their nominations for 141, 43 and 32 seats, respectively.
The Congress has filed nominations in 614 seats. Meanwhile, in the 287 seats of the Panchayat Samity, the CPI-M has filed nominations in 169 seats, and the AIFB, RSP and CPI have filed nominations in 30, 9 and 3 seats, respectively.
On the other hand, for the Zilla Parishad, the Congress has filed nominations for 20 of the total 26 seats in the district. “We feared sending our candidates to a number of gram panchayat and panchayat samities only because of the threat to life issued by TMC-backed goons. We appeal to the people to cast their votes in favour of the secular forces,” the Secretary of the North Dinajpur CPI-M, Apurba Paul said.
The President of the North Dinajpur Congress, Mohit Sengupta, said that his party has already formed an alliance with the CPI-M in the district and that members of both the parties have jointly initiated work in the rural belt.
“TMC-backed goons have already started threatening us to not stand against them in the rural polls. Several members of our party have refused to contest with the TMC after receiving such threats. We are requesting people to cast their votes in favour of the Left Front candidates in areas where there are no candidature for the Congress,” Mr Sengupta said.