CPI-M, Congress leaders in parleys to resolve poll tie-up hurdles

Kolkata, March 11 With their ongoing seat adjustment talks hitting a roadblock, Left Front spearhead CPI-M and the Congress leaders held a fresh round of discussions on Friday night to resolve the disputes.

Matters came to a head on Thursday, after the LF came up with its second list of 84 candidates. It has so far announced 203 candidates including two each of associate parties Janata Dal-United and Rashtriya Janata Dal, while the Congress has announced 75 seats that it has earmarked for contesting, though it is yet to declare the candidates.

The bone of contention lies in 16 seats which feature on the list of both parties. Eight of the contentious seats are in Murshidabad district, considered the base of state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Three senior Congress leaders Abdul Mannan, Pradip Bhattacharya and Somen Mitra went to the office of the Communist Party of India-Marxist's Bengali mouthpiece Ganashakti on Friday night and held talks with CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra and secretariat member Rabin Deb.

Mitra said the differences have been narrowed down.

"We have held discussions with empathy. The differences have narrowed down," said the former state Congress chief as he came out after the discussions and exuded confidence that the problems would be resolved.

Menwhile, a CPI-M central committee member Shyamal Chakraborty said in a situation where the Trinamool stood to gain in a big way due to friendly fights between the Congress and the LF, one of the parties needed to withdraw.

Congress chief Chowdhury, who had threatened to contest all the seats if the dialogues proved futile, seemed to have softened his stand.

"The tie-up will not suffer. Our understanding is very much on. We may have some friendly fights. I know the CPI-M has lot of compulsions, as it has to placate so many LF partners," he said.