NEW DELHI: In yet another display of internal strife, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury put out a stinging response to Anand Sharma’s criticism of the party’s alliance in West Bengal in a Twitter thread titled “Know your facts, Anand Sharma Ji”.
Chowdhury, who is the Bengal Congress chief, defended the party’s decision to tie-up with the Left and newly-formed ISF for the upcoming elections and accused Sharma of serving the “polarising agenda” of BJP.

In a series of tweets, Chowdhury said that CPM was leading the secular alliance in Bengal to defeat BJP’s communal politics and an “autocratic regime”.

“INC has got its full share of seats. Left Front is allocating seats from its share to the newly-formed ISF. Your choice to call the decision of the CPM-led front ‘communal’ is only serving the polarising agenda of BJP,” he tweeted.

He said those opposed to fighting the “venomous communalism” of BJP should support and campaign for Congress in five states “rather than attempting to undermine the party by remarks in tune with BJP’s agenda”.

Taking an obvious potshot at the G23 “dissenters”, Chowdhary said that he would “advise the select group of distinguished party leaders to rise above seeking personal comfort sports and stop wasting time singing praises of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
His remarks were in reference to senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad heaping praise on the Prime Minister at a recent rally in Jammu.

On Monday, Anand Sharma had questioned the party’s alliance negotiations with Indian Secular Front (ISF), a Muslim outfit headed by a firebrand cleric, saying it went against the “Nehru-Gandhi secularism.

Referring to the joint Kolkata rally of Congress, Left and the ISF of Furfura Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui, Sharma had tweeted, “Congress’s alliance with parties like ISF and other such forces militates against the core ideology of the party and Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism, which forms the soul of the party. These issues need to be approved by the CWC.”

He added, “Congress cannot be selective in fighting communalists but must do so in all its manifestations, irrespective of religion and colour. The presence and endorsement of the West Bengal PCC president is painful and shameful, he must clarify.” In Jammu over the weekend, where G-23 leaders attended a function to felicitate Azad, the J&K leader said though he and Modi were opposed politically, the PM did not “hide his reality”.