Beleagured West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has repeatedly admitted in public meetings that CPI(M) leaders and cadres had made mistakes which had alienated the people. Mr Bhattacharjee believes that the unprecedent drubbing that the Left Front received in the Lok Sabha polls was due to this
reason.
“Don’t try to lord over the people. Bow your head before the people, shun arrogance and reach out to them,” is his constant refrain to party cadre. Recently he admitted that unnecessary interference by party cadres in the life of civil society had also antagonised the people.
By constantly harping on the mistakes of a section of state leaders, Mr Bhattacharjee has absolved party general secretary Prakash Karat of any responsibility for the party’s rout in the 2009 LS.
No wonder that Mr Karat in a recent interview to a private channel, also happily repeated Mr Bhattacharjee’s line.
Suggesting that mistakes by the state government had led to erosion in the Left’s support base, Mr Karat claimed that those mistakes were now corrected. “Our chief minister has again and again said that we have learnt from those mistakes and we are confident that the people will support us,” he added. After the Left Front’s unprecedented drubbing in 2009 LS election, a debate had surfaced in the ruling CPI(M) over its main reason. Mr Karat had blamed the state government’s policy decisions for the alienation of the voters while the CPI(M)’s Bengal unit had held Mr Karat responsible for the rout. Both the CM and the state party secretary Biman Bose had felt that Mr Karat’s decision to withdraw support to the UPA-I government over Indo-US N-deal in 2008 had paved the way for Congress-Trinamul Congress alliance which led to the Left Front’s poll debacle. Mr Bose had openly said that Mr Karat’s experiment of Third Front had found no takers. For a long time, Bengal party leaders were sore with Mr Karat for this reason. But now it seems that the entire blame has been put at the doorsteps of a section of party leaders and cadre. “This line not only absolves Mr Karat but also Mr Bhattacharjee. Have you ever heard Mr Bhattacharjee admitting that his industrial overdrive and forcible land acquisition were also to blame?” asked a CPI(M) state committee member.