Left announces candidates for 4 more seats; CPI(M) state secretary Salim to contest from Murshidabad

The Left Front on Saturday announced the names of candidates for four more Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, including Murshidabad where CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim has been fielded.

Of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, the Left Front has already announced the names of candidates for 16 seats in its first list, and of them, 13 were from the CPI(M) and one each from RSP, CPI and Forward Bloc.

In the second list, apart from Salim, the Left Front named Alokesh Das of CPI(M) from Ranaghat, the party's Sukriti Ghosal in the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat and CPI(M)'s Shyamali Pradhan for the Bolpur constituency.

Addressing a press conference, Left Front chairman Biman Bose said the names were decided at a meeting of the constituent parties.

Salim is a former Lok Sabha MP from Raiganj, and prior to that, he was an MP from the Kolkata North-East constituency.

Das is a two-time former MP of CPI(M) from the erstwhile Nabadwip constituency, while the other two will be contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the first time. Pradhan is a former CPI(M) MLA from Nanoor, which is one of the seven assembly constituencies in the Bolpur Lok Sabha seat.

Bose said talks are on with the Congress over a seat-sharing arrangement.

In all, the Left Front has announced candidates for 20 seats, while the Congress has named nominees for eight seats in the state. There are 14 more seats for which neither of the two has announced any candidates.

Criticising the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre over the timing of the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the veteran CPI(M) leader alleged that the ruling dispensation at the Centre was behaving in a manner that it ''can do or undo anything''.

Bose claimed that it was not a healthy sign for the democratic setup of India.

''When the poll code is in force and the administration is working under the supervision of the Election Commission, a state's chief minister should not be arrested in connection with an offence which is claimed to have been committed much before,'' he said.

Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday in connection with a money-laundering case linked to the now-scrapped excise policy of the Delhi government.

Stating that Manish Sisodia, the former deputy CM of the AAP government, was arrested a year back in connection with the case, Bose said, ''Had he (Kejriwal) been arrested soon after that, this issue would not have cropped up. We cannot support this.'' The Left Front chairman claimed that on the other hand, little was being done in West Bengal despite allegations of corruption.

''There must not be double standards,'' he said, alleging that the BJP and ruling Trinamool Congress were in cahoots to sideline other opposition parties.

Claiming that those who had bought electoral bonds did so to get something in return, Bose said that it was surprising that the TMC was the second highest beneficiary of it, while the Congress, which has its presence in a number of states across India, was the third.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)