Murshidabad Dynamics: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Md Salim's Joint Appearance Raises Eyebrows

This election summer, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Md Salim were finally spotted together in public. Murshidabad, a hub of Bengali politics from Shashanka in the seventh century to Siraj ud-Daulah in the eighteenth, is a historic plain scorched by the April heat.

A beaming Chowdhury, the chief of the Bengal unit of the Congress and its leader in the Lok Sabha, was spotted alongside CPM state secretary Salim in a hammer-sickle-star uttoriyo on Thursday, the first time the two had been seen together since the election announcement.

"Across Bengal, we are battling together, and we shall support one another. That's as simple as that, declared Behrampore candidate Chowdhury.

The discussions over the last several weeks took conducted via phone conversations and an exchange of chits between Bidhan Bhavan and Alimuddin Street, despite the fact that both INDIA partners were able to finalize an apparently risky, last-minute seat-sharing deal in 40 of the 42 Bengal seats.

Ahead of the crunch of the election season, several in both parties hoped for more cooperative public appearances and activities, at least in light of Salim's anticipated attendance at Chowdhury's nomination filing in a few days.

According to a former top functionary in the Congress state unit, "Salim and Adhir seem to be focused on nothing but winning these two seats, Murshidabad and Behrampore, respectively."

According to an insider in the Congress, Chowdhury's adamant opposition to a truck with Mamata Banerjee is what caused the party to split with the Left in Bengal.

He stated, "But after that, he hardly did anything to make sure we had a good, smooth alliance with them."

"The parleys were immature and lazy, just like 2019 and 2021," he said.

Unknown for his close relationship to Chowdhury, a top state unit official stated that the true goal of INDIA should have been to guarantee the BJP secured the fewest number of the 42 Bengal seats feasible. Therefore, he argued, there was no use in continually putting a wrench in the works to lessen Mamata's chances in this situation.

"We are in a situation where we will contest in a dozen seats and might win zero instead of winning those two or four in alliance with Mamata," the veteran said, alluding to the fact that roughly one-third of Bengal's voters identify as Muslims and that the Congress's support base in the state has long been whittled down to a small number of seats in central and north Bengal with sizable Muslim populations.

Mamata had abandoned INDIA in Bengal and made the decision to run alone because she was appalled by the Congress's excessively long delay in finalizing the seat-sharing agreement and the Left's ferocious opposition to any understanding with her, which Chowdhury too frequently expressed in public.

However, the two partners who have been in and out of relationships since 2016 strangely kept quiet until the Election Commission said on March 16 that the seven-phase polls will begin on April 19.

According to a top CPM politician, "all we got to know was some informal dialogue taking place between Salim, and sometimes also Bimanda (Front chairman Biman Bose), and Adhir."

Chowdhury affirmed the assertion made by the CPM leader, stating: "They have not yet had formal discussions with either the AICC or me." I talked to Salimbhai once.

The Left met regularly to choose its candidates, but there was little indication that it was having official discussions with the Congress or Nawsad Siddique's ISF. The Congress never trusted the ISF, and a few days ago, it pulled out of any potential agreement, leaving the Left in the dust.

"We hoped to reach a consensus with the ISF... When Bose was informed that Bhangar MLA Siddique was blaming the CPM for the setback, he said, "They wanted many (20–22) seats."

Left allies seemed utterly stupid. When asked what was wrong with the seat-sharing talks, CPI state secretary Swapan Banerjee responded, "We are not in any dialogue with the Congress; the talks are taking place between them and the CPM."

The junior Left partners' dread of having to make concessions was the main reason behind their lack of desire for a seat arrangement with parties outside the Front.

Bose talked on how much their supporters in the Front would have to give up.

Salim acknowledged that it was difficult for anyone to give up a seat, saying, "There was no ready-made answer.... We were trying to put together an alliance while working on a formula.

Very little was done to ensure that the agreement would actually pay out in practice because the seat-sharing process was everything but easy.

Today, nineteen days later, Adhir appeared for Salim. Nothing significant between them, according to a top Bidhan Bhavan official, who did not account for sporadic outliers like Congresswoman Soumya Aich Roy, who was running in Jadavpur for the CPM's Srijan Bhattacharya.

These problems may have been avoided with the use of a coordinating system between the two parties. Perhaps in the Assembly elections in 2026," a youthful member of the CPM state committee stated.