The Congress on Thursday announced it would contest the Bengal Assembly elections on its own, fielding candidates in all 294 seats in an attempt to project itself as a credible alternative to the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

With this, Bengal now appears headed for a four-cornered contest involving Trinamool, the BJP, the CPM and the Congress.

The decision marks a clear break from the Congress’s alliance with the Left during the 2016 and 2021 Assembly as well as the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The call to go it alone was taken at a meeting on Thursday afternoon at the New Delhi residence of All India Congress Committee president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was present, along with senior Bengal leaders such as state Congress president Subhankar Sarkar and former MP and AICC working committee member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. AICC general secretary in-charge of Bengal Ghulam Ahmed Mir was present while former MP Deepa Dasmunshi joined virtually.

“This time in Bengal, everyone from party workers to the common people is asking us to fight alone. Candidates will be fielded in all 294 seats. The alliance with the Left or others has broken the morale of the grassroots workers. Therefore, all the leaders feel that we should fight alone, not in an alliance. The central leadership has accepted what the leaders of the Bengal Pradesh Congress wanted,” Mir said.

The Congress’s relationship with the Left in Bengal has yielded mixed results over the past decade. In the 2016 Assembly elections, the Congress emerged as the principal Opposition by contesting in alliance with the Left Front.

However, in the sharply polarised 2021 elections, both the Congress and the Left failed to win a single seat, despite fighting together with the Indian Secular Front. The Congress did manage a brief revival in 2023 by winning the Sagardighi Assembly by-election with Left support, but that success failed to translate into broader organisational recovery.

In 2021, while the Congress and the Left drew a blank, ISF leader Nawsad Siddiqui won from Bhangar, the lone seat secured by the alliance. The outcome triggered intense introspection within the Congress over its organisational weakness and political direction in the state.

Congress leaders now say the party wants to rebuild itself from ground up and position itself as a strong alternative to both the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP, a party leader in Calcutta said. The immediate focus, they said, would be on strengthening district-level units, bringing in new faces and restoring the confidence of workers. “The priority is to revive the organisation and morale at the grassroots,” the leader added.

The decision drew mixed reactions. Senior CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty said the Congress was entitled to take its own decision, but people had "expected all anti-BJP and anti-Trinamool forces to come together". He declined to comment whether this would help Trinamool by splitting votes.

ISF chairman and Bhangar MLA Nawsad Siddiqui called the decision "upsetting” and said his party would approach the Congress leadership to “change its mind”.

BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari dismissed the Congress as a marginal force in Bengal. “It gets only Muslim votes in Murshidabad and Malda.... Our aim is to consolidate Hindu votes,” he said.