KOLKATA: The Left Front and Congress on Wednesday joined hands for the 2021 Bengal assembly elections.
Keeping aside the seat-sharing discussions at present, the alliance decided to build a joint movement on the basis of common issues. The two sides held a meeting recently where they agreed to identify the issues to be highlighted jointly.
"In the meeting, we have decided to prepare a list of issues separately which we can utilize during the joint movements after Diwali. Once the lists are prepared, we will share it with each other and convene another meeting to decide what will be the issues to be adopted for launching joint movement targeting the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP," said a Left Front leader.
Those who participated in the meeting are Congress leaders Adhir Chowdhury, Abdul Mannan and Pradip Bhattacharya and Left Front's Biman Bose Surya Kanta Mishra. The Left Front and Congress are scheduled to prepare the alliance’s common minimum programme (CMP) before the next year’s election.
Congress sources said the CMP would be prepared from the list of issues of the joint movement slated to be held after Diwali.
This was the first meeting between Left Front and Congress since Chowdhury was selected the state president for the second term. Earlier the Left Front chairman exchanged dialogues with Chowdhury over phone on two occasions. "Chowdhury wanted to launch a series of joint movements against the TMC and the BJP as many of his party functionaries will be busy organising Kali Puja," said a Congress leader.
A section of Congress leaders proposed to portray Chowdhury as the face of the alliance and project him as the chief ministerial candidate in 2021 Assembly elections.
"We have not discussed anything about who would be the face of the alliance or chief ministerial candidate. Now our first priority is reach out the masses riding the issues that are directly related to common people," said a CPM leader.