In response to CPM’s invitation to Front partners for a rally on March 27, the Bloc leaders in West Bengal have confirmed their participation.

On Sunday, Left Front chairman Biman Bose told the media: “We have invited all our partners to attend the rally.” The newly-elected Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar will be felicitated at the rally in Kolkata’s Shahid Minar grounds .

Later, Bloc leader Hafiz Alam Sairani told The Indian Express that his colleague Naren Dey would be representing the party at the rally.

The Bloc’s participation comes despite the fact that the party had fielded its candidate against Manik Sarkar in the recently-held Tripura elections, which saw return of the CPM with a landslide victory. In West Bengal, wary of CPM’s unilateral decisions and its anti-people policy, the Bloc had announced to go it alone in the forthcoming panchayat elections.

The divide had further widened after police fired on Bloc supporters at Dinhata. But it seems the Tripura verdict has made the Bloc rethink its strategy as it failed to make any inroads and instead became weaker there.

According to Left Front sources, the Tripura polls gave out a ‘loud and clear’ message that the Bloc has no future without the CPM.

But the rapprochement between the two parties is not one-sided as the CPM is also holding meetings at the district levels to sort out the differences between its partners.

The CPM is going all out to hold bipartite or tripartite meetings with its partners like Forward Bloc, RSP and the CPI to resolve the bickering. The rift between the CPM and the Bloc is more pronounced in Coochbehar district.