WHIFF OF A THIRD FRONT
When Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took over as president of his party in West Bengal in early September, he declared that the “autocratic” Trinamool Congress (TMC) government will be given a “zabardast (tough) fight” in the assembly election due early 2021. Similar voices echoed from the Left Front, their legislative assembly leader Sujan Chakraborty saying defeating the TMC was the “first step to taking on the BJP eventually”. As an embattled Mamata Banerjee fine-tunes her game plan against main opponent BJP, the emergence of the Congress-Left as a prospective third—in their words ‘secular alternative’—front is adding to her worry lines. All the more because Chowdhury—a known Mamata-baiter since her days in the Congress—is the face of this combine.
The Congress and the Left had fought the 2016 assembly election, too, as allies, but finished a distant runner-up. Together, they won 76 of the 294 seats and 38 per cent of the votes, against the TMC’s 211 seats and a 44.9 per
