Kolkata, March 23 (IANS) Congress and All India Secular Front (AISF) are likely to publish their respective candidate lists on Monday.

The Congress party is likely to publish its first list of 100 candidates for the 294-seat West Bengal Assembly. The AISF, which will have a seat-sharing arrangement with the CPI(M)-led Left Front, is expected to publish its candidates for all 33 seats which it will contest.

Congress has, this time, decided to sever its seat-sharing arrangement with the Left Front, which started in the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections. It will contest independently for all 294 Assembly constituencies in the state.

“In all probability, the name of the former state Congress president in West Bengal and former five-time party Lok Sabha member, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, will be there in the first list likely to be published today. Chowdhury will be contesting from one of the 22 Assembly constituencies in his native Murshidabad district,” said a member of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, known as an extremely close confidant of Chowdhury.

He also said that the name of the former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member, Mausam Benazir Noor, who had recently returned to Congress, might also figure in the first list of candidates. She is expected to contest either from the Sujapur or Malatipur Assembly Constituency in her native Malda district.

“The first list will mainly include names of candidates for the Assembly constituencies in districts which had been traditionally Congress strongholds like Malda, Mushidabad, North Dinajpur and Purulia,” said the WBPCC member.

Meanwhile, from the list of 33 Assembly constituencies, where the AISF will announce its candidates, it is clear that while there will be an overall alliance with the Left Front, in certain constituencies, there will be friendly contests with some Left Front allies, especially All India Forward Bloc.

In fact, Forward Bloc was the only Left Front ally that had opposed a seat-sharing arrangement with AISF. In the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, there was a three-way alliance between Congress, Left Front, and AISF.

While Left Front and Congress could not send a single MLA to the Assembly in 2021, Nawsad Siddique was elected as the sole AISF representative in the Assembly after being elected from Bhangar in South 24 Parganas district.

–IANS

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