The 31 seats going to polls on Tuesday in the third phase will decide whether the new political equation put forth by the CPM and agreed upon, albeit reluctantly, by the Congress will change Bengal’s political landscape.
In their struggle for existence, the two parties have held the hand of a religious leader from the minority community who keeps the skullcap on his head, but talks about education, jobs, Hindu-Muslim and Muslim-Dalit unity and not the dogma that he spewed till even a year ago.
The next phase of polls in parts of South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly does not have the high profile focus of the second phase that saw Mamata Banerjee and Suvendu Adhikary locking horns in Nandigram. But it will be watched for Indian Secular Front (ISF) chief Abbas Siddiqui, the newest entrant in Bengal’s politics who has latched on to two grand old parties: the Congress and the Left.