People's Democracy

   Historic Victory For The Bengal Left Front

B Prasant

Left Front: 35.  Pradesh Congress: 6.  Trinamul Congress: 1.  BJP: 0.

THIS was the picture that emerged late into the evening of May 13 as official results were declared.  A sea of Red virtually swept across Bengal throughout large parts of the night as the people came out onto the streets, waving the Red Flag, lighting up torches, and shouting slogans hailing the historic victory of the Left Front and cheering the debacle of the forces of religious communalism, the BJP, and its running mate, the Trinamul Congress.

The elections had seen tough campaigning, mostly house-to-house and through group meetings, by the Left Front and the CPI(M), during which the misdeeds of the BJP and its cohorts were highlighted and the modest achievements of the Left Front suitably explained.  All the state level leadership took part in the campaign work.  Among the central leadership, Sitaram Yechury, Manik Sarkar, and Brinda Karat came down to address mass rallies. 

Padayatras, processions, smaller baithak meetings, gram sabhas, and haat sabhas were held at least twice daily.  The Left Front was able to function as a solidly united unit of action having declared its candidates at least a couple of months ahead of the opposition. Questionnaires were distributed amongst the electorate.  Electronic campaign supplanted albeit in small measures the traditional printing and distribution of pamphlets.  The Left Front manifesto was a hot item among the people.

The intensity of the effort as well as the steady achievements of the Left Front government that were there for everyone to see ultimately saw the communal BJP wiped out of the state.  The Trinamul Congress’s nine seats came down to one.  Comparatively speaking the Pradesh Congress could marginally improve its seats to six from three the last time around.

Kolkata’s two seats came back to the fold of the Left Front after a lengthy period.  The Left had won the Kolkata northwest seat close to five decades ago. Even the Kolkata northeast seat was last won by the late Sunil Maitra way back in 1980.  But this time both the seats were wrested by the CPI(M) with Sudhangsu Sil defeating Kolkata mayor and Trinamul Congress candidate Subrata Mukherjee in in northwest and Mohd Salim defeating Ajit Kumar Panja in the northeast of Kolkata. Only the Kolkata south seat eluded the grasp of the Left this time.  But Mamata Banerjee’s winning margin came down by 55 per cent. Rabin Deb was the CPI(M) candidate here.

In Jadavpur, Sujan Chakravarty (CPI-M) defeated the sitting Trinamul candidate, Krishna Basu by a margin of over 72 thousand votes—the seat had been held by the Trinamul Congress from 1996.  Among other major victories were: Santasree Chatterjee (CPI-M) defeating Akbar Ali Khondkar of the Trinamul, the sitting MP; Prasanta Pradhan (CPI-M) winning over sitting Trinamul MP Nitish Sengupta at Kanthi; CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta defeating Trinamul Congress Panskura line supporter, Hema Choubey by a large margin; The two BJP ministers, Tapan Sikdar and Satyabrata (aka ‘Jalu’) Mukherjee getting handsomely beaten at Dumdum and Krishnagar by CPI(M) candidates, respectively Amitava Nandy and the athlete Jyotirmoyee Sikdar. 

In all 21 Left Front candidates have won by a margin of two lakh or more.  Among them, Anil Basu from Arambagh (CPI-M) won by a margin of 5.92 lakh; Somnath Chatterjee (CPI-M) from Bolpur by 3.10 lakh, and Nikhilananda Sar (CPI-M) from Burdwan by 4.71 lakh. 

Left Front chairman, Biman Basu, CPI(M) state secretary, Anil Biswas, and Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee have felicitated the people of Bengal for allowing the Left Front to win in a decisive fashion and also for driving off the BJP from Bengal and for reducing the Trinamul Congress to a loner.

“This time: ONLY MAMATA!”

Mamata Banerjee initially would not speak to any media persons, either personally or over the telephone.  Her aides told us that she was “meditating.”  However, huge sound waves of a fierce-natured internecine bickering and quarrelling could be heard quite clearly from even outside of the perimeter of her residence. 

She ultimately did make a very grim appearance, sat silently for a few minutes - and then started to rant and rave about her not being able to fight the ballots with bullets. On being told something by some of her women aides (who keep surrounding her all the time), she simmered down a bit and only for a moment, and then again screamed her old tune about “terror,” “riging” and “police inaction” before storming off. 

That only she alone would survive the poll battle of all her colleagues was prophetically written in the graffiti that adorned her house and the constituency that said simply:  “This time: ONLY MAMATA!”  As we were coming out of the compound within which her residence is situated, we could see the krishnachura tree in full bloom, sprouting a myriad of deep red flowers:  not a very pretty sight for the Trinamul Congress supremo, we are assured. 

However, there is no truth perhaps to the story carried by a Bengali daily that she had to be forcibly held back when she had tried to hack down the tree herself on getting to witness the flowers in bloom just as the news of the debacle of her outfit had started to roll in.