Kolkata (West Bengal): The Left Front has reportedly appealed to cleric Abbas Siddique to field a candidate from the Nandigram Assembly constituency in the forthcoming West Bengal Assembly election.
While the Left Front is already having an alliance with Congress for the forthcoming state Assembly polls, the Congress has some reservations about having a seat-sharing agreement with Siddique's party, the Indian Secular Front (ISF).
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With this development, Nandigram has once again come in the limelight. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has already announced that she herself might contest for Trinamool Congress from Nandigram in the forthcoming polls.
Suvendu Adhikary, on his part, has challenged that the chief minister will be defeated in Nandigram by at least 50,000 votes.
Now, with the Left Front offer to ISF, the situation becomes even more interesting.
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Barring the first four years after Independence, the Left Front was in control of the Nandigram constituency for a long time, with the winning candidates being from CPI. The majority voters in Nandigram come from the minority community.
The Left Front leadership feel that if ISF fields a candidate from Nandigram, the contest would be interesting, since Siddique has sufficient influence on the Mosques and Mazars there.
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CPI has secured victory in this constituency for nine consecutive times in the past, while the CPI(M) candidate emerged as the victor just once. Since 2009, Trinamool Congress has taken total control over Nandigram.
Political analysts also feel that the minority vote factor has played an important role in the decision of the Left Front. Even Siddique himself has given a subtle hint of fielding a candidate in Nandigram.
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