The dominance of the Left parties in West Bengal’s electoral politics continues to wane. After suffering major setbacks in the 2008 panchayat polls and the recent Lok Sabha elections, municipal polls have brought more bad news.
The Left won only three of the 16 municipalities that went to the polls last Sunday, with the Congress-Trinamool alliance bagging the remaining 13.
In 2004, the Left Front had bagged 10 of these 16 municipalities. This time, the Left did poorly in urban and semi-urban pockets in north and south Bengal. While it was Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress that humiliated the Left in south Bengal, the Congress swept north Bengal.
What is even more alarming for the Left is that it even lost those municipalities where the opposition was divided. The only three municipalities that the Left could retain, though marginally, are Mal, Gangarampur and Rajarhat-Gopalpur.
Political analysts say declining morale of the activists at the grassroot level is the main reason behind the electoral disaster.
“It is evident that the Left’s campaigning machinery has broken down, and there has been no visible attempt to control the damage,” a senior political analyst said.
A senior CPI(M) state committee leader admitted that the weakening morale of the party workers after the Lok Sabha election created a vacuum and the party couldn’t reach out to the people.
Partha Chattopadhya, Trinamool Congress legislator and leader of the opposition in the West Bengal assembly, said the Left has representatives at all levels but “they don’t do anything worthwhile for the electorate”. “There are so many issues to work on, especially minorities and poverty alleviation,” he said.
Chattopadhyay alleged that the opposition could have won in Rajarhat-Gopalpur and Mal but the “CPI(M) unleashed a reign of terror and influenced the electorate with muscle power”.
