A piquant situation will arise if this tactical understanding is sealed. Both the parties are in a dilemma over Bengal because of simultaneous polls in Kerala where the two are locked in a bitter power battle. While the two parties might hold hands in West Bengal they would be pitted against each other in Kerala. How can they convince the people of their sincerity or their ideology about this contradiction? The opinions in both parties are for and against such a tie-up. Neither have an alternate route except going for it alone, which will fragment the anti-TMC voters. Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows.

For the Left, it would like to become relevant in politics again. They are no longer in a position to play the role of effective opposition since their tally had come down in the previous Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. They have yielded their space to other parties like the BJP, TMC, RJD and JD(U). Both the Congress and the CPI-M feel that they have to unite to ensure defeat of the TMC hoping for inter party transfer of votes.

Going by the 2014 Lok Sabha poll results when the Congress and the Trinamool Congress were allies, the TMC’s vote-share was 30.8 per cent and it won 214 assembly seats while the Congress with 9.7 per cent vote-share won 28 seats. The Left bagged 28 seats with a 29.9 vote-share and the BJP with 17 per cent vote share won 24 seats. If this pattern were to be repeated then the combined vote-share of the Left and Congress could be around 100 seats while the TMC on its own could win 178 and the BJP 18 seats. So clearly the TMC has the advantage. In any case the vote share does not remain the same from one election to another.

The catch will be of course the BJP’s performance. Because of the Narendra Modi wave in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, the BJP's vote share rose to 16.8 per cent. But with the decline in the Modi magic and the growing disillusionment with the Narendra Modi regime, it has dampened the party’s prospects in Bengal. This should be good news for the Left, since the BJP ‘s rise is almost entirely at the cost of the Left Front and its decline could restore the Left chances. Moreover, there is no leader of the stature of Mamata. Even the Left is unable to revive in Bengal. It is because the CPI-M leadership is yet to come to terms about their decline. The leadership continues to explain the mistakes like Singur and Nandigram as an aberration. It has also not attempted any course correction. Moreover, the party has not launched any sustained attempt to launch agitation against the TMC rule.

The state leadership of the CPI-M has been making overtures to the Congress for a joint fight against the Trinamool. Leaders like former CPI-M chief Prakash Karat and Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar have been against it. The UDF and the LDF in Kerala have been alternating in power. It is the turn of the LDF now. Secondly, how will the workers at the grass-root level bury the hatchet, particularly in West Bengal where the Congress had been fighting the Communist rule for 34 years before the TMC won the state? The two parties have a long history of violence in Bengal.

What is the advantage for the Congress of going with the Left while the TMC too was showing some inclination for an alliance? The Congress was divided in its opinion about the alliance. While the majority including the state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury and others want the party to align with the Left, there are others who want the party to go for it alone. Those who opposed the alliance argue that the workers would not reconcile with the one-time archrivals in the state. The Congress knew that the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was softening towards the parent party only to stop the Congress from aligning with the CPI-M and to split the opposition votes, which will go to her advantage.

Basically for the CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, to get into an open alliance with the Congress would mean giving up its anti-Congressism. For the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, it would be a complete break with the ruling Trinamool Congress Party, which has 46 MPs —12 in Rajya Sabha and 34 in Lok Sabha. That is a crucial element in Parliament. It’s the old, aggregated Congress vote — the TMC plus the Congress — that had helped Mamata break the uninterrupted three-decade Left Front rule in Bengal. The fight is also for the Muslim votes (25.2 per cent) and even if a Congress-Left alliance were to be sealed, there still would be a three-cornered fight with the Muslim votes getting split between the Trinamool and the proposed Congress-Left alliance. (IPA Service)