Left, Congress, which governed Bengal for 64 years, draw a blank

KOLKATA: The

Left

and Congress drew a blank in

Bengal

, a state in which one or the other had been in government for the first 64 years since Independence. It was a first for both parties in the state and astonishly happened despite the two former rivals joining hands and roping in a third partner.



A quarter of a century ago, in the 1996 assembly polls in the state, the Left and Congress between themselves won 280 of the 294 seats and 86.3% of all the votes polled. Even five years ago, they had 76 seats between them and 38% of the votes. Now they’ve been reduced to no seats and under 10% of votes — 5.5% for the Left and 2.9% for Congress.

In the 23 years since it was formed, the Trinamool Congress has steadily eaten into its parent party’s vote, and leaders; the process is now near-complete. For the Left, the erosion has been much more sudden and dramatic, with anecdotal evidence indicating it has lost some of its base to the BJP and the rest to the Trinamool, developments confounding all political logic.

Unlike in Kerala, where the Left successfully led a two-pronged battle, the Left-Congress, fighting against BJP and Trinamool in Bengal, got subsumed in the Trinamool-BJP binary.

The Congress faced a rout in Murshidabad, Malda and North Dinajpur apparently because the party’s minority voters switched over to Trinamool. Congress candidates lost traditional bastions such as Lalgola,

Farakka

in Murshidabad, Sujapur, Mothabari, Malatipur in Malda, Raiganj, Goalpokhor in North Dinajpur among others, while the Left lost Jadavpur, Siliguri, and Chanditala in Hooghly. The Left couldn’t pick up a single seat from its erstwhile strongholds East Burdwan and West Burdwan.

Abbas Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF) candidate Naushad Siddiqui will represent the Sanyukta Morcha in the assembly from

Bhangar

in South 24 Parganas. Morcha leaders hoped that Abbas Siddiqui’s ISF would cut into the Muslim vote-share of south Bengal, where the major beneficiary had been the Trinamool. It didn’t work in most places. Instead, the minorities, feeling insecure because of the aggressive BJP majoritarian campaign, chose Trinamool in South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Hooghly and

Howrah

.

The Left has no representation from Bengal either in the assembly or in parliament. The Congress disaster, particularly in Murshidabad, Malda, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, also has ramification for the party’s state unit. The BJP, instead, has occupied the entire opposition space.