Cuttack, Jan. 12: The battle for the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) has gained momentum with the Congress firing the first electoral salvo at the BJD-BJP and the Left forging alliances with smaller parties to put up an alternative front on the eve of filing of nominations that began today.

“In the past five years, the BJD-BJP-ruled council was a fiasco that pushed the city back by several years,” senior Congress leader and former Cuttack MP Jayanti Patnaik alleged.

“Congress is the only option for the people to ensure all-round progress and development of the millennium city,” Patnaik said, while asking party members to remain united at a meeting in two wards on Sunday.

The Congress leaders are apparently hopeful of bagging more wards by giving a united effort by the party this time.

After a Congress majority council (21 of 35 wards) in 1997, the party could win from only 14 of 48 wards in the last civic polls as its breakaway Orissa Congress-backed Independent candidates contested from 10 wards and managed to win from three.

Meanwhile, the Left — CPM, CPI and Forward Bloc — has entered into an alliance with NCP, JD(U) and fledgling regional party Samrudha Orissa to fight the civic polls in Cuttack jointly.

“The alliance was forged to form a third front and provide an alternative for the BJD, BJP and Congress,” Cuttack city CPM president Subash Singh said, adding that seat-sharing was being finalised by a six-member committee.

“We will make fast deteriorating civic infrastructure and failure of the BJD-BJP alliance in the state to push for inclusion of the millennium city in the Centre’s national project for rejuvenation of old cities in the country,” Singh added. In the last civic polls, CPM had won from one ward.