KOLKATA: The top leadership of CPI(M) has given a message to the party's rank and file in rural West Bengal to submit blank ballots for the forthcoming panchayat elections in the state on Saturday in case of those seats have no candidates either from the Left Front allies or from Congress or even Left or Congress- backed independents.
From the message, it is clear that the Left parties are determined to stop the transfer of their dedicated votes to BJP, a trend which was evident in West Bengal since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls or to be more precise since the 2018 rural civic body polls in the state.
Officially, the CPI(M) leadership is claiming that the stand of the Left parties is clear which is equal distance from the BJP and Trinamool Congress.
"BJP and Trinamool Congress are two sides of the same coin. So our aim is to create unity of all anti-BJP and anti-Trinamool forces and more importantly the unity of people," CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said.
However, the stand of the CPI(M) leadership on this count is totally opposite to the slogan of the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari's strategy and slogan of "No Vote to Mamata".
According to Adhikari, the stand of the party is clear on this count. "Wherever there is a BJP candidate, we are appealing to people to vote for them. But in seats where there is no BJP candidate our call is 'no vote to Mamata' which means call to vote for the strongest candidate against Trinamool Congress," Adhikari said.
Trinamool Congress' state spokesman Kunal Gosh has ridiculed Adhikari's slogans and claimed that the slogan reflects the political bankruptcy that BJP in West Bengal and the leader of the opposition are suffering from.
Incidentally, before the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, Trinamool Congress gave the slogan "no vote to BJP". Similarly, before the 2011 state Assembly elections, which marked the end of the 34-year Left Front rule in West Bengal, the current ruling party in the state raised the slogan "no vote to CPI(M)".