Bengal Elections: Left Front Releases Candidate List Featuring Young Generation

West Bengal Left Front on Wednesday released a youth-friendly candidate list of 124 where student and youth wing leaders figured multiple times on the list. The list comes after the names of candidates for the first two phases had been published earlier.

In the latest, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member MD Salim is set to fight the elections from Hooghly’s Chanditola. Moreover, Aishe Ghosh, the secretary of the Student Federation of India (SFI) unit at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), is contesting from Jamuria in Burdwan; JNU SFI leader Dipsita Dhar is the CPI(M) candidate from Bally in Howrah. State SFI Secretary Srijan Bhattacharya, a notable orator, is set to fight from Singur, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) state President Meenakshi Mukherjee will contest from the high-profile Nandigram seat against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Apart from this, DYFI state Secretary Sayandeep Mitra from Kamarhati , Saptarshi Deb from Rajarhat Newtown, SFI state President Pratikur Rehman from Diamond Harbour have also been given tickets in this assembly elections. CPI(M) state Secretary Suryakanta Mishra is no longer in the fray.

“We will fight it out like we fought the Nabanna movement,” said the youth to-be-legislators on getting nominations to fight the assembly elections .

Speaking to Newsclick, SFI leader Srijan Bhattacharya said that this election would decide whether truth and positive future would be upheld or myths and destruction-mongers of Singur would be upheld.

Meenakshi Mukherjee, in her reaction to being nominated for Nandigram, said, “No fight is tough for Left activists and communist party workers. We will reach out to people and make them understand our fight is for them and we will break the media-propelled binary (of a fight between TMC and BJP) in Nandigram itself.”

Senior CPI(M) leaders Kanti Ganguly and Ashok Bhattacharya, CPI(M) Legislative Party leader Sujan Chakraborty, and CPI(M) Central Committee member Abhas roychoudhury are set to contest in the elections from Raidighi, Siliguri, Jadavpur and Durgapur East assembly segments respectively. Pritha Tah, youth activist and the daughter of martyr youth movement leader Pradip Tah, is set to fight from Burdwan East assembly segment.

The CPI(M) has also fielded scientist Dr Priti Kr Ray from Bongaon South assembly segment and Former SFI leader Palash Das from Dumdum assembly segment. Dr Fuad Halim is set to fight from Ballygunge and former SFI state secretary Debjyoti Das entering the fray from Khardah assembly segment

Left Front Chairman Biman Basu, flanked by CPI(M) state Secretary Suryakanta Mishra and CPI state Secretary Swapan Banerjee, released the final list of candidates where some seats still have been left vacant due to unfinished dialogue with the Congress, ally of the Left Front in the state as part of the Sanyukt Morcha. Dialogue in these cases are slowly progressing as the Pradesh Congress Committee president Adhir Chowdhury is in New Delhi and discussions are taking place through e-mails. Basu added that as there are some hiccups regarding one or two seats only, the entire announcement should not be stalled for that, and hence, the Left Front has announced its candidates while leaving the seats vacant for allies Congress and ISF .

Minutes within the announcement of the names, Left activists came out on the roads in various places of the state to whitewash the walls for graffiti painting as part of the poll campaign. In Jadavpur, a rally took place celebrating the nomination of Dr Sujan Chakraborty. In many places, the work to decorate the areas with red flags has already started after discussion of the candidates’ names.