Kolkata: Following its worst electoral performance in West Bengal in 32 years, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, is worried that it may not be able to reverse the anti-incumbency wave that cost it 20 Lok Sabha seats in the Lok Sabha polls before the assembly election in 2011.
The party is contemplating a change in leadership at the state level with an eye on the assembly election, according to Nirupam Sen, West Bengal’s commerce and industries minister and the No. 2 in the state cabinet.
Who’s to blame? Bengal ministerand CPM politburo member Nirupam Sen. Indranil Bhoumik / Mint
“It’s too early to predict (the outcome of the 2011 assembly election), but yes, it is going to be a tough job—not an easy task at all,” Sen said in an interview. “Because we have been in power for so long, facing this kind of an anti-incumbency wave is very difficult, but we have to address it.”
“The results of the general election show that a section of the people wants the Left Front to go…,” said Sen, who is also a member of the CPM’s politburo—the party’s highest decision-making body.
“We will try to overcome the problems, but it is really a tough job because in two years, how much tangible change can we bring about? And it’s going to be tougher because of the economic downturn—my personal view is things are going to get worse and more people are likely going to lose jobs this year.”
Asked if the CPM was weighing options on changing its leadership at the state level, Sen said, “Some changes are bound to happen. We are discussing among ourselves.”
In the general election, the CPM’s vote share in the state fell 5.5% from what it was in 2004 to 33%. The party and its allies—the Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Communist Party of India, or CPI—together got 43.3% of the vote, 7.5% less than in 2004, and won only 15 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state; in 2004, they had secured 35.
The key gainer was the Trinamool Congress—the state’s main opposition party led by Mamata Banerjee—which, in alliance with the Congress, won 25 seats, with the Trinamool Congress winning 19 and the Congress, six. An independent candidate backed by the Trinamool Congress also won, taking the opposition’s tally in the state to 26.
Details of the polling show that the CPM and its allies received fewer votes than the Congress-Trinamool Congress combine in 193 of the 294 assembly segments in the state; in the 2006 state election, they had secured 235 assembly seats.
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Why did the CPM and its allies perform so poorly in the general election?