In its first review of its dismal elections results, the four Left parties agreed that the Front had “lost touch with people” and also blamed the “high-handed attitude” of the Bengal government.
Clearly, knives are out for the top leadership in the CPI(M), and especially West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Perhaps anticipating this, Bhattacharjee is skipping Monday’s CPI(M) Politburo meet in Delhi, citing administrative work in Kolkata. Sources present at the review meeting held by the the CPI(M), CPI, Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Forward Bloc(FB) revealed that neither the Bengal government nor the state secretariat of the Kerala unit was spared.
The meeting was attended by AB Bardhan, Prakash Karat, Debabrata Biswas, TJ Chandrachoodan, Sitaram Yechury, S Ramachandran Pillai, D Raja and G Devarajan.
“We decided that each party would assess what went wrong and then collectively decide a political line. We made it clear that the CPI(M)’s dominance was not to be tolerated,” said a source.
“We were astounded at the difference between the estimates given by state secretariats and the actual figures. We were that we would win 10 seats in Kerala and 28-30 seats in West Bengal. To be so wide off the mark, there has to be something seriously wrong,” said the source.
CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat was amenable to the suggestions and has the uneviable task of facing the party Politbureau on Monday where he will have to defend his actions.
In West Bengal, where a vast chunk of the rural and minority votes shifted to the Trinamool, CM Bhattacharjee will come in for flak.
The inept handling of the land acquisition row for industrial projects in Nandigram and Singur and the mishandling of the Rizwanur murder case contributed substantially to the unprecedented rout the Left faced in West Bengal. While Karat will face allegations of dreaming up impossible coalitions and taking hard doctrinaire stances, the fact remains that the loss in West Bengal was due to a perceived dilution of ideology.
