The CPI(M)'s West Bengal secretary Surya Kanta Mishra on Thursday said that it will be good if all the opposition forces in the country, including the Trinamool Congress, come together to fight the BJP at the national level as “our battle will move forward if we can oust it from Delhi”. But the Left forces will take on both the Mamata Banerjee-led party and the saffron camp in West Bengal, the Left leader said.
He also said that a section of the party had put the BJP and the TMC, in the same bracket as its principal adversary, coining the term 'BJMOOL' ahead of the assembly polls held earlier this but that was not accepted by people.
Delivering a speech at a programme to mark the 133rd birth anniversary of Muzaffar Ahmed, one of the founders of the communist movement in India, here, Mishra said, "We feel that all secular, democratic and Left forces have to be brought together to fight against both the Trinamool Congress and the BJP in the state.”
Those who think that the BJP can be tackled with the help of the TMC in West Bengal would in turn end up helping the saffron brigade, the CPI(M) state secretary said.
Noting that the party's strategy in the 2021 elections was correct, he said that the CPI(M) cannot deviate from the path of taking on both the TMC and BJP in the state.
The CPI(M) drew a blank in the elections along with its alliance partner Congress, while the newly-formed Indian Secular Front (ISF) managed to open its account with one seat.
"Those who are favouring a soft approach towards the Trinamool Congress and want to fight the BJP under its umbrella will find that the BJP will gain from it," Mishra said.
Reiterating the CPI(M)'s assertion that the TMC supremo had brought the BJP to Bengal to oust the Left Front from power, he said that the saffron party has to be fought on ideological issues.
Biman Bose, CPI(M) politburo member and the West Bengal Left Front chairman, had also hinted on July 26 that the party is ready to join hands with the TMC to fight the BJP at the national level.
On the BJMOOL slogan, he said on Thursday, "There had not been any official resolution coining the phrase BJMOOL. Some party members might have individually coined the term but that was not accepted by the people," Bose told reporters.
Mishra also said that such a theory was flawed. "We have to join hands to fight BJP at the national level in the first place," he said.
However, CPI(M) politburo member Md Salim said the party’s slogan "BJMOOL", an attempt to convey to the voters that the BJP and the TMC were two sides of the same coin, was apt.
"Did we not refer to the Congress and the Naxals as Conxal in the 1970s? But did it mean they were one? They are two different parties," he said.
He claimed that such coupling means that the two complement each other and serve each other's purpose.
Salim claimed that in Tripura, the TMC and the BJP had come together to defeat the Manik Sarkar-led Left Front government in 2018 and are now decoupling for the coming 2023 assembly elections in the north-eastern state.
Salim criticised the 'Khela Hobe' (game on) slogan of the TMC claiming that it is a ploy to deviate the people's attention from the real issues affecting the lives of the citizens.
Admitting that the 2021 assembly election results in West Bengal were "devastating" for the CPI(M)-led Left Front, Biman Bose said "we cannot sit at home because of the loss. Everyone should play their respective roles in helping the party rise once again. We are passing through hard times and a path will have to be found to come out of it.”
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