Left Front announces first list of 192 candidates for West Bengal Assembly polls

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front on Monday (March 16, 2026) released its candidate for 192 out of 294 Assembly seats for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls. Party veterans along with the emerging youth leaders have made to the candidate list. The list includes 27 women candidates. 

The highlight of the CPI(M) candidate list is Sabina Yasmin from Kaliganj Assembly seat in Nadia district. Ms. Yasmin is the mother of nine-year-old Tamanna Khatun, a young girl who was killed in political violence on June 23, 2025. Trinamool Congress workers hurled crude bombs on her residence after winning the local by-elections killing the child on the spot.  

Some of the most important faces to emerge in the list are women youth leaders Minakshi Mukherjee from Uttarpara and Dipsita Dhar from Dum Dum Uttar. Former Kolkata Mayor and Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya in Jadavpur, and former MLA and senior minority leader Deblina Hembram from Ranibandh are among the notable candidates featuring in the first list. 

With the Congress deciding to contest polls on its own strength, the Left Front have reached an electoral understanding for seat-sharing with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and the Indian Secular Front. 

The Congress and Left Front fielding candidates separately marks an end of almost a decade of understanding between the two political forces. In the last Assembly elections in 2021, Left Front and Congress drew a blank while the ISF won one seat in West Bengal. 

The lists from CPI(ML) and ISF are yet to be published and likely to be shared by the parties themselves in the coming days.  

The Left Front in West Bengal includes the All-India Forward Bloc (AIFB), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Communist Party of India (CPI), and the Marxist Forward Bloc (MFB) . 

The CPI(M) also held talks with suspended Trinamool MLA Humayun Kabir, who recently launched the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) after defecting from the ruling party. 

A closer look at candidates 

Minakshi Mukherjee is a prominent youth leader who made it to the Central Committee of the CPI(M) in 2025 who also serves as the president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI). 

The 40-year-old leader gained prominence when she contested the Nandigram constituency during the 2021 Assembly elections against political heavyweights such as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari. Ms. Mukherjee rose to the limelight after she and several other party leaders faced police brutality following the death of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) leader Anish Khan in 2020, which sparked Statewide protests. 

Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya is a senior advocate and veteran CPI(M) leader who has won multiple elections and was also the former Mayor of Kolkata and former Rajya Sabha MP. 

Deblina Hembram is a prominent tribal face from Bengal’s Jhargram district and is also part of the CPI(M)’s Central Committee. 

Dipsita Dhar is a young leader of the Student Federation of India (SFI) and has served as the All-India Joint Secretary of SFI. She is a research scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University and rose to prominence as a prominent youth leader who has an appeal among the young voters.