Shiv Sena to contest 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, announces Sanjay Raut

Shiv Sena has decided to contest the West Bengal Assembly Elections, scheduled to be held in April-May this year, party leader Sanjay Raut announced on Sunday.

Taking to Twitter, Raut said, “So, here is the much awaited update. After discussions with Party Chief Shri Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena has decided to contest the West Bengal Assembly Elections. We are reaching Kolkata soon…!! Jai Hind, Jai Bangla!”

So, here is the much awaited update.

After discussions with Party Chief Shri Uddhav Thackeray, Shivsena has decided to contest the West Bengal Assembly Elections.

We are reaching Kolkata soon…!!

Jai Hind, জয় বাংলা !

— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) January 17, 2021

The party had contested the Lok Sabha elections from the state in 2019 and Assembly election in 2016.

The Shiv Sena, which quit the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance to form the government in Maharashtra in 2019, had also contested in Bihar Assembly elections 2020. However, it did not manage to win any seat. The party has contested polls in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan in the past, without much success.

In a bid to claim its long-lost ground in West Bengal in the impending Assembly elections in the state, the Congress has forged an alliance with the Left front. Both the parties will be up against the ruling Trinamool Congress and an aggressive BJP, which made clear inroads in Bengal during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Bengal polls: Left, Congress to hammer seat-sharing deal by Jan-end

Asserting that they will jointly fight the “communal” BJP and the “fascist” Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Left Front and the Congress on Sunday said that their seat-sharing arrangement for the upcoming state assembly elections will be finalised by the end of this month.

Congress state chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that his party and the Left Front will hold further parleys to finalise the nitty-gritty of the deal. Senior leaders of the two parties held talks earlier in the day over the seat-sharing agreement.

Left Front chairman Biman Bose said that though the BJP is the “biggest enemy of the country”, but given the situation in West Bengal, the fight is against both the TMC and the saffron party to save the state from communal strife and the “binary” that is being created among the people.