Left Front ropes in ISF to checkmate AIMIM, check division of Muslim votes in West Bengal

The ISF can be an effective counter to AIMIM, the Left Front hopes, but the Congress still has some reservations over the new outfit.

A new political outfit, which claims to represent the interests of marginalized sections, but is described by its rivals as a Muslim party, may have an impact on the outcome of the high stakes eight-phased West Bengal assembly polls beginning March 27.

Cleric Abbas Siddiqui, who has floated the Indian Secular Front, is the new kid on the block and has raised the hopes of the Congress-Left Front alliance, which is allegedly trying hard to counter attempts by the BJP and the ruling TMC to polarize the electorate.

While the ISF is expected to woo the Muslim voters miffed with the TMC camp, the new party is also intended to keep the community votes shifting to parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, which may indirectly help the BJP.

The BJP won 18 of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the 2019 national elections and emerged as the main challenger to the ruling Trinamool Congress.

Since then, the saffron party gained majorly across the state by playing up the Hindutva card which has pressed West Bengal’s roughly 30 percent Muslim voters to look around for a new protector of sorts.

The Muslim votes in West Bengal traditionally got divided between the Congress and the TMC but AIMIM joining the fray this time has caused concern among the Congress-Left Front grouping, which fears a division in the minority votes.

AIMIM won five seats in the Bihar assembly polls last year and limited the chances of the Congress-RJD-HAM alliance come to power. The Bihar results bolstered the plans of the Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP Owaisi to expand his base and present himself as a champion of Muslim voters across the country.

The ISF can be an effective counter to AIMIM, the Left Front hopes, but the Congress still has some reservations over the new outfit, especially when it comes to parting with its traditional bastions like Malda and Murshidabad during seat sharing.

Interestingly, before entering the West Bengal fray, Owaisi had explored an alliance with Abbas Siddiqui, cleric of the popular Sunni Muslim shrine Furfura Sharif in Hooghly district, and planned to contest around 100 of the 294 seats.

But Abbas Siddiqui dropped Owaisi and chose to join hands with the Congress-Left grouping. The Left Front has given around 30 seats to the ISF from its quota but the new outfit reportedly wants seven more, which have to come from the Congress quota.

That is unlikely given the grand old party’s penchant for extensive negotiations to get the seats it wants to contest.

At a recent joint rally in Kolkata, marked by huge crowds, Abbas Siddiqui was all praise for the Left but said the Congress was not willing to accommodate anyone in seat sharing.

For the grand old party, which has got around 92 seats to contest, parting with a few more to accommodate the ISF is a bit problematic. One, it is now sure of the ground strength of the new outfit and two, the Congress can’t afford to lose seats in a tightly contested election.

By most estimates, the Congress-Left-ISF grouping is being seen as the third front in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections in which the main fight is between the ruling TMC and the BJP.

The third front, however, feels it can make a difference if the grouping is able to break the BJP’s attempts to convert the polls into a Hindu-Muslim binary.

The Left as well as the West Bengal Congress have always targeted TMC and the BJP saying they were two sides of the same coin. They pointed out that the ruling party had been an NDA constituent at the Centre earlier under former prime minister AB Vajpayee.

Joining forces with new players and targeting the ruling party is fine during election time but the move to induct ISF at the eleventh hour is fraught with risk as any consolidation of Muslims votes towards a particular group can help the BJP poll managers swing the majority voters in its favour.

Already, the assessment of poll pundits is that the BJP has grown largely due to the shift of Communist Party of India-Marxist’s Hindu voter base.

While Mamata was accused by the BJP of wooing the Muslims, the Left had so far kept its image as a neutral player intact. That will change after playing ball with the ISF.

But the Left is trying to counter that charge by highlighting public issues like agriculture, condition of industry, joblessness, plight of migrant workers and women’s safety.

To ward off its critics, the ISF has fielded both Hindu, Tribal and Muslim candidates.

The new outfit has sizeable supporters in southern parts of the state like South 24 Pargana, North 24 Pargana, Hooghly, Howrah, Burdwan and Birbhum and is run by Naushad, younger sibling of Abbas, who has appointed a Tribal Simul Soren, as its president.

In fact, Abbas has been positioning himself as anti-Mamata over the past year by regularly issuing anti-chief minister statements to convey his message that the community had been taken for a ride by the ruling party over the past decade.

The new outfit claims it focusses more on issues of the other backward classes, given over 95 percent of Muslims in West Bengal belong to that social group. The OBC and Tribal plank, feel his supporters, will help Abbas fight the communal party tag being labelled by the BJP and the TMC.

While trying to prop up a viable front, the Left is also trying to address its own weakness by making room for the younger generation and the same has been reflected in its selection of candidates.

According to Left’s calculation, promoting the home grown ISF could help outsider parties like AIMIM take roots in the eastern state, which has been known for its inclusive culture, but where the polity has been sharply divided by the saffron party’s growing ambitions.

Tawha Siddiqui, uncle of Abbas Siddiqui, has been a long time TMC supporter. Whether his nephew can turn a new leaf, the pollsters are watching keenly.