The Left Front-Congress alliance in West Bengal is in the final stage of deciding on the seat-sharing formula for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections.
Sources said that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) wants to contest the polls in 70-80 seats while Congress wants to field candidates in 45-50 seats. Nothing has been announced officially yet.
The Left and the Congress will publish separate election manifestos although the parties are in an alliance in Bengal. However, both the parties will list a common minimum program for the election.
Leaders of the Left and the Congress have said that several rounds of talks will be held to finalise the seat-sharing formula for the polls.
Both the parties are expected to field candidates from the seats in which they had won last time. Leaders of the parties have said that they are not rigid about fielding candidates from some particular seats and are ready to agree and accept instead, for the benefit of the alliance.
Senior Congress leader Somen Mitra said that the number of seats is being negotiated by the district leaders of both the parties. The state-level leaders will only intervene in the matter if any dispute arises at the district level, he said.
A committee has been formed in each of the municipalities for selecting the candidates, Congress leader Shubhankar Sarkar said.
Both the parties had performed poorly in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections after there were disagreements between their leaders on the seat sharing formula. Senior leaders feel that if they are able to increase their share of votes in the civic polls, then that will lift the spirit of their party workers before the Assembly elections in 2021, which they plan to fight together.
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