Kolkata: Bengal Congress chief Subhankar Sarkar on Wednesday urged opposition parties to put aside personal differences and form a unified front against the governing BJP in upcoming civic elections.“All anti-BJP forces, under any flag, from any section of society should fight together in the civic polls,” Sarkar told a news channel, calling on parties to set aside egos.The appeal follows a proposal last month by former state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who invited Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to rejoin Congress along with her loyalists, provided she severed ties with her “baggage”, in an apparent reference to Abhishek Banerjee.Senior TMC figures pushed back, emphasising that Mamata commands the bulk of the state’s opposition base, pointing to the 2.6 crore votes her party secured in the recent state assembly elections.Kunal Ghosh, TMC’s North Kolkata district president and state lawmaker, who has in the past batted for a broad opposition alliance, said, “Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Jyoti Basu had come together to fight against Rajeev Gandhi.”“Right now, civil rights and citizenship issues are under attack, and the opposition must stand together,” Ghosh said.CPM’s Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharjee, who too has previously called for a broad coalition, cautioned that any coalition must be grounded in common ideology. “An unprincipled alliance will not sustain,” he said.
