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Journalism of Courage
The rout of Communists in West Bengal is now total. From 15 in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the Left parties have been reduced to two in 2014, losing many seats they had been winning for four decades.
Both the winning MPs of the Left belonged to the CPM, with its other constituents such as RSP, Forward Bloc and CPI drawing a blank. CPM’s Md Selim just about scraped through in Raigunj, defeating Union minister Deepa Dasmunsi of the Congress by a margin of 1,634 votes. In Murshidabad, a four-cornered contest helped the party nominee to an 18,000-vote win.
A depressed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is learnt to have not spoken a word at the Secretariat meeting held in the party headquarters at Alimuddin Street on Friday. In the evening, he sat alone in his party office room.
In Delhi, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat told The Indian Express, “The result in West Bengal is distorted. There was massive rigging and intimidation by the TMC . Our strength has not eroded, the results are distorted and hence, do not reflect the popular support for the CPM and Left.”
Senior CPI leader A B Bardhan, however, refused to accept the CPM’s line in entirety. “There is no doubt there was rigging. But one cannot just put that as the argument for the big loss. We have to sit down and analyse,” he said.
The Left vote share was around 30 per cent (down from over 40 per cent in 2009) but did not translate into many seats. The BJP with 18 per cent won the same number of seats, two. The Left lost in most of its 15 stronghold seats. Among the losers was Basudeb Acharia, a nine-term CPM MP from Bankura. Actress and political novice Moon Moon Sen of the Trinamool Congress beat him by 1.3 lakh votes. Acharia’s secretary said “he was not in a position to speak”. “He is feeling extremely unwell, he is very upset.”
Inputs from Ruhi Tewari in New Delhi
