Bihar Assembly Elections 2025 | Decks cleared for CPI(ML) L to contest 18 seats in polls: Dipankar Bhattacharya

Kolkata: CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya on Monday said that decks have been cleared for the party to contest at least 18 seats in the Bihar polls, while negotiations were underway for a few more constituencies.

Bhattacharya said that the party, which is a constituent of the opposition Mahagathbandhan, will begin filing nominations from Tuesday, even as the Grand Alliance is yet to make a formal announcement about seat sharing.

He also slammed the voter roll deletions under the Election Commission's special intensive revision (SIR) as an "electoral purge masquerading as verification".

The Left outfit, which emerged as a key player in the 2020 polls by winning 12 of the 19 seats it contested, this time had sought around 40 seats.

Bhattacharya, in an interview with PTI, said that seat-sharing discussions with allies in the Grand Alliance have been finalised for 18 of the 19 constituencies it had fought last time, while talks are underway for a few more.

He said the party's campaign machinery has already been mobilised across rural Bihar.

The CPI(ML) Liberation is a crucial part of the Grand Alliance, which also includes the RJD, Congress, CPI, CPI(M) and Mukesh Sahni's Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).

Even as the ruling NDA has already sealed its seat sharing formula, the opposition camp remains locked in negotiations. The RJD and Congress are still ironing out their understanding in Delhi, delaying the final announcement of seat distribution.

"The RJD and Congress are finalising their understanding in Delhi. I don't know the outcome yet," Bhattacharya said, refraining from commenting on whether the delay would prove disadvantageous.

He had earlier told PTI last month that he hoped the Congress would be more realistic while the RJD more accommodative of its smaller allies during the Bihar seat-sharing talks.

The nomination process for the first phase of polling ends on October 17, and the Left outfit has already set its campaign in motion, focusing on livelihood issues, unemployment, price rise and SIR, which Bhattacharya termed the "systematic disenfranchisement of the poor."

While finalising seat sharing, the opposition has also been grappling with the controversy over mass voter deletions in Bihar under SIR, an issue that it has placed at the heart of its campaign.

Rejecting speculations that the Grand Alliance had earlier considered boycotting the polls in protest against alleged large-scale disenfranchisement, Bhattacharya said such an option was "never on the table" as it would "facilitate exclusion instead of fighting it".

"Boycott was never an option because that would mean walking out of democracy when democracy itself is under attack," Bhattacharya said.

"When the entire issue is about exclusion, boycotting the election would only mean voluntarily excluding ourselves. The fight is against exclusion, not to facilitate it," he said.

His remarks come in the backdrop of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav's July statement that the Grand Alliance might "consider boycott" the elections if the deletions were not rectified.

"Some individuals might have made emotional remarks when fears of mass disenfranchisement were at their peak, when nearly two crore voters seemed at risk, but as a party, we never considered boycotting," he said.

Calling the SIR an "electoral purge masquerading as verification," Bhattacharya alleged that the deletion of lakhs of names amounted to a "body blow to democracy and citizens' right to vote".

"This is not verification, this is exclusion. It's a warning sign for the future of India's democracy. A democracy cannot survive such a massive and opaque cleansing of voters. SIR is an attack on the Constitution itself," he said.

The EC's final electoral roll for Bihar, published on September 30, listed 7.42 crore voters, a drop of more than 47 lakh since the SIR began in June. Bhattacharya accused the EC of "abdicating its constitutional responsibility" and outsourcing the burden of correction to voters and political parties.

"The EC's job is to ensure a fair and accurate roll. Instead, it has made the process so complicated that ordinary citizens, especially the poor and migrant workers, are unable to navigate it. The burden has been shifted from the institution to the individual," he said.

The CPI(ML) Liberation leader said the deletions reflected a social pattern of exclusion, disproportionately affecting vulnerable sections.

"Women, the poor, migrant workers, Dalits and possibly Muslims have been most affected," he said.

"The top three districts with the highest deletions are Gopalganj, Kishanganj and Purnia -- two of them Muslim-majority. In Dalit-dominated areas too, large numbers of names have disappeared. These are not random technical errors; these are social patterns of exclusion," Bhattacharya added.

He added that reports of around 6,000 voters being deleted on grounds of 'doubtful citizenship' raised serious questions about the intent of the exercise.

"If true, this is alarming. Between 2016 and 2019, the law minister told Parliament there were only three such cases across India, none in Bihar. So how did we suddenly jump to 6,000?" he asked.

He said the SIR controversy went beyond Bihar.

"If this SIR model is extended to other states, it will become a national method of disenfranchisement. This is not an administrative update; it's a political experiment in exclusion," he warned.