Kolkata, Mar 15 (PTI) The CPI(M) is fighting an existential battle in the electoral scene in West Bengal, pinning its hopes on a slight upward trend in its vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls compared to the 2021 state assembly polls.
STRENGTHS: Exuberant over the “good response” it received during the 20-day ‘Bangla Bachao Yatra’ (Save Bengal March) across the length and breadth of the state, the party is harping on corruption allegations against the ruling Trinamool Congress and religious divisions.
The CPI(M) boasts of a clean image and a no-frills attitude of its leaders, who lead austere lifestyles.
Leftist organisations have led agitations over some of the biggest issues in the state, such as the school jobs scam and the rape and murder of an on-duty doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital.
WEAKNESSES: The agitations and movements have not reaped electoral benefits for the CPI(M) in the 2021 assembly polls and the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with the Left Front drawing a blank at the hustings.
The CPI(M)-led Left Front secured 39 per cent of the vote in 2011, with the CPI(M) alone accounting for 30 per cent, while a decade later, in the 2021 assembly elections, the Left Front’s tally fell to just 4.73 per cent.
A dwindling support base and ageing leadership, though the party has inducted some fresh blood, seem to be major handicaps for the Left Front, which ruled the state for 34 years till 2011.
Despite having ruled West Bengal uninterruptedly from 1977 to 2011, the Left Front has been pushed to the margins over the past decade.
OPPORTUNITIES: In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) alone secured 5.73 per cent votes, up from 4.73 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls, raising hopes for a better showing at the hustings.
The CPI(M) has been making all out efforts to rope in fresh blood among its leadership, promoting functionaries like Minakshi Mukherjee to the forefront.
The Left parties’ secular pitch is likely to make a mark among a section of the Bengalis who have traditionally stayed away from overt religious polarisations.
The Left have been targeting the high-pitch religious narratives of the BJP and the Trinamool Congress, offering an even-handed approach towards people not on the basis of religion, but jobs, education and good law and order.
The CPI(M) has been targeting the Trinamool Congress dispensation in West Bengal over law and order issues, including crimes against women, violence and white-collar crimes.
CHALLENGES: The Left Front had fought the 2016 and 2021 assembly elections and 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state in a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress, but this time the grand old party has decided to go it alone.
Maintaining that the Left Front is preparing to fight the 294-seat West Bengal assembly elections on its own, CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim has claimed that this will not prove to be a setback for the Left Front.
Salim’s recent meeting with suspended TMC MLA Humayun Kabir at a hotel in New Town here, however, raised eyebrows as the latter has courted controversy over the foundation laying of a Babri Masjid-styled mosque in Murshidabad district.
Political critics have claimed that this is a sign of desperation among the CPI(M) leadership, who had also gone into a seat-sharing arrangement with the then newly-formed party ISF, led by Nawsad Siddique, a descendant of Muhammad Abu Bakr Siddique, the first Pir of Furfura Sharif, in the 2021 assembly polls.
The defection by Pratikur Rahaman, a young state committee member who had fought the 2024 Lok Sabha polls against TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee from Diamond Harbour, had grabbed headlines. PTI AMR ACD
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