The Left Front on Thursday published its second list of 32 candidates for the Assembly elections, taking the total number of nominees to 224.

CPM state secretary Md Salim said the LF's seat-sharing negotiations with the Indian Secular Front (ISF) were in the final stretch, and the remaining candidates would be declared shortly.

“We are in the final stage of seat-sharing talks with the ISF. All like-minded Left forces will come together to fight unitedly against the Trinamool Congress and fascist forces,” he said at a press meet.

The LF has allocated 10 seats to the CPI(ML) Liberation, which has aligned with the Left Front for the first time in a Bengal Assembly election and has already announced its nominees.

Finalisation of candidates for the remaining 60 seats is largely linked to the pact with the ISF. Sources in the Forward Bloc, which went unrepresented at the press briefing on Thursday, said the party needed to resolve disputes over a few seats with the CPM.

Mihir Byne, senior leader of Left Front constituent RCPI, announced the candidates' list as Biman Bose was indisposed. Of the 32 candidates, 28 are from the CPM, three from the CPI and one from the RSP. The list, however, did not feature the names of leaders such as Salim, former MP Sujan Chakraborty or youth leader Shatarup Ghosh.

Shanti Giri of the CPI has been pitted against BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari and Trinamool's Pabitra Kar in Nandigram.

Young lawyer Srijeeb Biswas will contest on the CPM ticket from Bhabanipur, where chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition, are locked in a tight contest.

Apart from Biswas, the notable young face among the new LF canddiates is Afrin Begam Shilpi, who is a research scholar at Jadavpur University.

Afrin, who had recently accompanied Salim and Samik Lahiri during the CPM's meeting with the Election Commission's full bench led by Gyanesh Kumar, has been fielded from Ballygunge. Similarly, the CPM has nominated Jamal Hossain from Murshidabad's Raninagar, where the party secured a lead during the last Lok Sabha elections.

Speaking after the second list was released, Salim reiterated the CPM's long-standing demand for the publication of a complete and error-free electoral roll. He said the CPM had moved Calcutta High Court to ensure that eligible voters' names were not left out of the electoral roll.

Asked about the large-scale transfer of officers, the CPM state secretary said the BJP thought that polls could be fought with the help of the IAS, IPS and central forces, but that was an entirely wrong premise.

"In a democracy, it is the people who decide the outcome of polls. People across the globe and in democracies have united to effect a change of regime. Central forces cannot achieve that. We have fought this during the Emergency and after the Emergency," Salim said.