Comrades for now

Comrades for now

A CPM-Congress pact in Bengal grows more likely but the pinpricks remain.

Congress’s desire for an electoral pact in Bengal has brightened with CPM’s dominant Kerala unit appearing to drop its reservations to the tie up. Congress and CPM have slid into irrelevance in Bengal but are fierce rivals in Kerala. For long CPM’s Kerala unit has feared that an electoral understanding with Congress elsewhere would undermine its standing in Kerala. But the loss of Tripura and the inability to arrest the slide in Bengal and consequent diminution of CPM into a one-state party appears to have softened the Kerala comrades and forced them to see the issue from Bengal’s perspective.

Though this alliance was decimated by Trinamool Congress in 2016, contesting alone is not an option either for CPM or Congress. In the 2018 panchayat polls, both parties were pushed further to the margins and BJP has emerged as the primary opposition party. Their challenge will be to woo those voters who are disappointed with TMC but are opposed to BJP as well. But the alliance of convenience remains a difficult sell to Bengal voters given their long, violent rivalry before their respective slides.

CPM’s Kerala-dominated politburo may have budged to the extent of “taking all tactical” steps to oust BJP. But the situation in Kerala is different. In 2014, despite the Modi wave and UPA-2’s unpopularity, Congress-led UDF trumped CPM-led LDF 12-8 in Kerala’s 20 seats. At most a tacit understanding with Congress in the few seats that BJP gives a tough fight may happen. Even most Congress leaders view any alliance in Kerala with CPM as politically suicidal given BJP’s vociferous Sabarimala campaign. What happens in Bengal, is likely to stay in Bengal. But CPM and Congress can certainly look to Tripura’s two seats where BJP battles the Citizenship Bill fires, less than 12 months after a famous victory.