The Congress and the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have fielded different candidates for the byelections in six Assembly constituencies in West Bengal, signalling that the long-standing electoral understanding between the two in the State may have come to a halt. This reflection has come after the change in leadership of the state unit—replacing Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a vocal critic of Mamata Banerjee, with Subhankar Sarkar, Congress doesn’t want to be seen as too antagonistic to TMC. The Congress’s past tie-ups with the Left have annoyed CM Mamata Banerjee whose Trinamool Congress (TMC), also an INDIA bloc constituent, had refused to enter into a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress for the Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal. The six constituencies going to the polls on November 13 are Naihati, Haroa, Midnapore, Sitai (SC), Madarihat (ST), and Taldangra. The Trinamool Congress had won five of the seats in the 2021 Assembly election, while the BJP won Madarihat in north Bengal. The byelections were necessitated after the MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year.
