Pointing finger at the big brother party for the rout in civic polls, the Left Front partners have now become stoic and a bit sceptical about the “turnaround theory” which the CPI(M) had tried to present on Wednesday. The major Front allies believe that “the winds of change are now a reality” and there is no chance for the Left Front to bounce back in the 2011 Assembly polls.
Putting the onus on the CPI(M) “for its wrong policies”, the allies argued that it had paved the way for the debacle of the Left Front. “With the defeats in the municipal elections, a full circle is complete: of losing our ground in rural and urban areas in Bengal,” senior RSP leader Kshiti Goswami said. He added that the verdict predicts change. Significantly, CPI(M) politburo member and state industry minister Nirupam Sen has also hinted that a change in the state corridors of power was in the offing.
Blaming the Marxist party, Mr Goswami, who is also the state PWD minister, said, “As the CPI(M) is the biggest partner of the Left Front, corruption has dug deeper into it than in us.”
Echoing Mr Goswami, Socialist Party leader Kiranmoy Nanda also admitted that winds of change were sweeping the state. Mr Nanda also said that the Left Front has lost the people’s trust after being in power uninterruptedly since 1977.
“The downslide which started from the panchayat elections in 2008 is going on. I did not expect a better result than this. The wrong policies of the government have taken us down. One more reason is the wrong attitude towards the people. We have lost people’s faith and trust,” Mr Nanda, the state fisheries minister said. “After the Lok Sabha debacle, I had said let us resign and go for a fresh mandate. But my proposal was rejected by the CPI(M),” he added.