- All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar)
All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar) was a
political party inIndia , emerging out of split from theAll India Forward Bloc . In the spring of1948 the recently reorganized All India Forward Bloc split into two factions. In February the Central Committee of AIFB met inVaranasi to discuss the situation after Independence and Partition. At the meeting it was decided that AIFB should break all relations to theIndian National Congress and that a separate party should be created out of the branches inPakistan . The then general secretary of the party,Sheel Bhadra Yagee effectively dissolved theBengal state committee of the party, and appointed "ad hoc" committees inWest Bengal andEast Bengal . This spurred discontent inside the party. Leading the rebellion against Yagee was the party president,S.S. Cavesheer . Yagee decided to resign as general secretary. In May the Central Committee met again and appointedRamchandra Sakharam Ruikar as the new general secretary. Yagee grouped his followers around himself, and by this time the two factions virtually functioned as two separate parties. The group led by Ruikar had its emphasis onnationalism rather thanMarxism , and called themselves 'Subhasists'.On December 29-31 the Ruikar faction held a congress in Ashutosh College Hall,
Calcutta . Ruikar was elected general secretary and Cavesheer as president. At the same time the Marxist faction held a congress inHooghly . Thus the split was complete. The Ruikar-led party adopted theIndia n tricolour with a leaping tiger as their flag, identical to the one used byNetaji Subhash Chandra Bose 'sIndian National Army .In 1951 the issue of reunification was raised inside Ruikar's party. In June the Central Committee of the party held a meeting which decided to move ahead with the reunification of Forward Bloc. Ruikar and
Leela Roy disagreed with the decision, and were expelled. The two Forward Bloc's held a joint central committee meeting inHowrah on June 23, in which the two parties merged. Ruiker and Leela Roy did however mobilize their followers and reconstituted themselves as a separate party.In the
1952 general elections, the Electoral Commission let the Ruikar-led party contest as 'Forward Bloc (Ruikar)' and the other AIFB group as 'Forward Bloc (Marxist)'. FB(R) contested sixLok Sabha seats, 3 inMadhya Pradesh , 1 inMadras and 2 inWest Bengal . The elections resulted in a humiliating defeat for Ruikar's party. It total the six candidates got 133 936 votes.In the West Bengal legislative assembly election the party was a member of the
People's United Socialist Front , together with the Socialist Party and theRevolutionary Communist Party of India . [M.V.S. Koteswara Rao. "Communist Parties and United Front - Experience in Kerala and West Bengal". Hyderabad: Prajasakti Book House, 2003. p. 213.] The party contested 32 assembly seats, and won two (the only two PUSF to win any seats). [M.V.S. Koteswara Rao. "Communist Parties and United Front - Experience in Kerala and West Bengal". Hyderabad: Prajasakti Book House, 2003. p. 214.] The elected MLAs of the party were Atindra Nath Bose fromAsansol and Biren Roy fromBehala . [ [http://www.eci.gov.in/SR_KeyHighLights/SE_1951/STATISTICALREPORTS_51_WestBengal.pdf List Of Political Parties ] ]The following year the party was disbanded and merged into
Praja Socialist Party .ource
#Bose, K., "Forward Bloc", Madras: Tamil Nadu Academy of Political Science, 1988.
References
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