Two senior leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Md Salim and Sujan Chakraborty, are not expected to participate in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections. This decision was reached during a state secretariat meeting of the party where both leaders expressed their preference to campaign for the party across the state instead of running for office themselves.
It is a common practice for CPI(M) state secretaries in West Bengal to refrain from contesting elections. This tradition dates back to the time of Pramod Dasgupta, the first state secretary of the party in West Bengal, who was also one of the initial politburo members of the CPI(M) after its split from the Communist Party of India in 1964.
While Md Salim’s predecessor as state secretary had contested elections, Salim himself faced defeat in both the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. On the other hand, Sujan Chakraborty, despite pressure from other state secretariat members to contest, has chosen to support party candidates through campaigning rather than entering the electoral race.
The current plan for the upcoming Assembly elections involves only two state secretariat members, Minakshi Mukherjee and Palas Das, as the candidates, as confirmed by a state secretariat member.
