If there was confirmation needed that the Left Front in West Bengal is a sinking ship,that confirmation has come twice,almost within a year. In fact,the results of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and 80 other civic body elections have shown that the hole in the ship has widened and its sinking fast. A year is a long time in politics,but few would hazard asserting that the electoral trend against the Left and the drift of the popular mood can be reversed. The CPM-led state government,constitutionally,is still the legitimate administration in Bengal,but it will be asked at all levels of the polity whether the time has indeed come for Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to consider the most graceful of his options,given the unambiguous verdict of the people of the state,even clearer this time than in last years Lok Sabha polls. Nevertheless,if the Left Front doesnt want to advance the assembly contest scheduled almost exactly a year hence,it must be accepted that it is within its rights to make that political choice. Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress are the undisputed victors of Sundays polls,all the more so in the absence of an alliance with its Central and Lok Sabha electoral ally,the Congress. Contesting against both the Left and the Congress,the Trinamool has won 95 of the 141 KMC wards a landslide. Itll also form the boards in a majority of the other bodies,on its own and with the Congress. However,Banerjee knows that her triumph in the rest of urban Bengal is not half as complete as in Kolkata. And an assembly election occurs on a larger scale,at a different level of polity,where this urban vote is a small fraction of the whole. While its tempting to write off the state Congress and call the bluff of its hubris,the analysis is not bleak for the party at all. Barring Kolkata,the Congress has not only held on to most of its bastions in north Bengal but also improved its performance in some. Clearly,Mamata Banerjee cannot wrest Bengal from the Left without acknowledging and enlisting the role of the Congress. If it was premature to call Bhattacharjees government lame duck after the general election,it is no longer so; its difficult to imagine how its writ will run here on. On the other hand,since Banerjee is unlikely to shift focus so close to the shore,its time she took a call on the Union railway ministry,in the interest of the nation.
