Buddhadeb's clear message to Congress to align with Left

Sending out a categoric message to the Congress to team up with the Left Front for the upcoming West Bengal assembly polls, former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Saturday asked the Congress to spell out its stand on the issue.

Bhattacharjee, a senior leader of Left Front spearhead Communist Party of India-Marxist, called upon other Leftists and political parties as also all sections of the people to join hands and remove the Trinamool Congress from power.

"We Leftists have come together. We are urging other Leftists to come with us to save the state from doom. We are appealing to all the parties. We are asking the Congress, on which side of the fence are you? On which side are you in this fight?" Bhattacharjee said.

"We are asking all sections of the people to join hands. In the coming struggle, we will show that we are not alone, we will remove this enemy from power," he said, while flagging off a padyatra (march) from this rural hamlet in Hooghly district to Salboni in West Midnapore.

The padyatra was organised by the Leftists under the banner of the Bengal Platform of Mass Organisations.

With assembly elections around three months away, the CPI-M has been repeatedly sending out feelers to the Congress to form an alliance to take on the Trinamool.

Earlier, CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra and party politburo member Mohammed Salim had asked the Congress to take a decision on the issue.

A majority of Congress leaders have also expressed a desire to tie up with the Left Front.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, while the Trinamool secured 39.3 percent of the votes, the Left Front and the Congress got 29.5 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.