The Minority United Front was an electoral alliance formed ahead of the 1954 East Bengal Legislative Assembly election. It consisted of the Pakistan Gana Samiti, the Pakistan Socialist Party and the Abhay Ashram. [1] [2] [3] The Minority United Front contested 19 seats, in both the Caste Hindu and Scheduled Caste constituencies. [3]
There had been talks on electoral arrangement between the Minority United Front and PNC, but that did not materialize in any pre-poll pact and the two groups were the main competitors for the Caste Hindu seats. [1] There were also attempts to form an alliance between the Minority United Front and the Rasaraj Mandal-led faction of the East Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, but in the end the Mandal-led group contested on their own. [4]
The Minority United Front won 10 seats in the Assembly. [1] Out of the three Pakistan Socialist Party candidates that had been fielded by the Minority Unity Front as candidates, all were elected - Trailokyanath Chakravarty, Pulin De and Deben Ghosh. [5]
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated as CPI(M)/CPIM/CPM) is a communist political party in India. It is the largest communist party in India in terms of membership and electoral seats ( 3 in Lok Sabha and 5 in Rajya Sabha ) and one of the national parties of India.
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The East Pakistan Provincial Assembly, known as the East Bengal Legislative Assembly between 1947 and 1955, was the provincial legislature of East Pakistan between 1947 and 1971. It was known as the East Bengal Assembly from 1947 to 1955 when the provincial name was changed. The legislature was a successor to the Bengal Legislative Council and the Bengal Legislative Assembly, which were divided between East Bengal and West Bengal during the partition of Bengal in 1947. It was the largest provincial legislature in Pakistan. Elections were held only twice in 1954 and 1970.
Jogendranath Mandal, was one of the founding fathers of the modern state of Pakistan, and legislator serving as country's first minister of law and labour, and also was second minister of Commonwealth and Kashmir affairs. In the cabinet of Interim Government of India, He got the law portfolio before. As a leader of the Scheduled Castes (Dalits), Jogendranath Mandal campaigned against the division of Bengal in 1947, believing that the divided Bengal would mean that Dalits would be at the mercy of the Muslim majority in East Bengal (Pakistan), and at the thraldom of majority caste-Hindus in West Bengal (India). In the end, he decided to maintain his base in East Pakistan, hoping that the Dalits would be benefited from it and joined the first cabinet in Pakistan as the Minister of Law and Labour. He migrated to India a few years after partition after submitting his resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, citing the anti-Dalits bias of Pakistani administration.
United Bengal was a proposal to transform Bengal Province into an undivided, sovereign state at the time of the Partition of India in 1947. It sought to prevent the division of Bengal on religious grounds. The proposed state was to be called the Free State of Bengal. A confessionalist political system was mooted. The proposal was not put up for a vote. The British government proceeded to partition Bengal in accordance with the Mountbatten Plan and Radcliffe Line.
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Pulin De was a Bengali socialist leader. He was jailed for 12 years during British rule.
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Legislative elections were held in East Bengal between 8 and 12 March 1954, the first since Pakistan became an independent country in 1947. The opposition United Front led by the Awami League and Krishak Sramik Party won a landslide victory with 223 of the 309 seats. The Muslim League Chief Minister of East Pakistan Nurul Amin was defeated in his own constituency by Khaleque Nawaz Khan by over 7,000 votes, with all the Muslim League ministers losing their seats.
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The East Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, later the East Pakistan Scheduled Castes Federation, was a political party in Pakistan. In the first years after the independence of Pakistan, the party was one of the two main political parties of the Hindu minority population in East Bengal. After departure of its main leader Jogendra Nath Mandal in 1950, the party suffered a number of divisions. In the mid-1950s the party participated in different coalition governments at Pakistan Centre level and East Pakistan provincial level. After 1958 the party went into oblivion.
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