The Congress on Thursday announced it will contest all 294 seats in the forthcoming West Bengal Assembly elections independently, ruling out any pre-poll alliance in the state.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at his New Delhi residence. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal, and senior leaders of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee attended the meeting.
West Bengal Congress president Subhankar Sarkar, former state unit chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and other senior leaders were present during the hour-long deliberations, which reviewed the party’s preparedness and electoral strategy for the polls due early this year.
Briefing the media after the meeting, Congress general secretary and West Bengal in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir said the leadership had extensive interactions with the state unit.
“Today, the Congress’s top leadership held an interaction with the senior leaders of West Bengal, including PCC president Subhankar Sarkar and former chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. The discussion was regarding the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal,” Mir said. He said the dominant view within the party was to go it alone.
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“All the leaders gave their views. The collective opinion of the leadership was that this time party cadres and the general public want the Congress to contest in all the seats in West Bengal,” he added. Mir said the party would now gear up for a full-scale campaign across the state.
The West Bengal Assembly elections are scheduled to be held early this year along with polls in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The Congress leadership has already held similar review meetings with state units in other poll-bound states.
In West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress has expressed confidence about retaining power.
Meanwhile, the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls is underway in the state. The exercise, aimed at updating voter lists by adding eligible voters and removing ineligible names, has drawn criticism from the ruling TMC, which has questioned its timing ahead of the elections.
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