Mamata’s Lal Slam ends 34 years of Marxist rule

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Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on her way out from Raj Bhavan in Kolkata on Friday. PHOTO: PTI

A virtual tsunami unleashed by Trinamul Congress chieftain Mamata Banerjee made history here on Friday — dethroning the longest-serving democratically-elected Communist government in the world. The star of Vladimir Lenin — to whom the state’s CPI(M)’s rulers routinely paid public tribute and whose photograph had pride of place in their offices — had well and truly dimmed after 34 long years.

With the grand alliance of the Trinamul Congress and the Congress sweeping the Assembly elections, the Left Front faced its worst-ever electoral debacle. In an Assembly of 294, with the TMC-Congress-SUCI alliance securing 226 seats (Trinamul 183, Congress 42, SUCI one), the Left managed to get only 63 berths (CPI-M getting 40). The Congress benefited greatly from the alliance, with its tally jumping from 17 seats in 2006 jumping to 42 in 2011.
CPI(M) heavyweights, including chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and several of his top Cabinet colleagues, were blown away in the Mamata tidal wave. The ministers who were trounced included industry minister Nirupam Sen, finance minister Asim Dasgupta , sports minister Kanti Ganguly, urban development minister Ashok Bhattacharya, housing minister Gautam Deb, higher education minister Sudershan Roychowdhury and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami. There was utter shock at the CPI(M)’s Alimuddin Street state headquarters as reports started pouring in of the chief minister and the others getting defeated. A total of 23 ministers failed to get re-elected, including 14 at the Cabinet level.
Chief minister Bhattacharjee was defeated in Jadavpur constituency by the Trinamul’s Manish Gupta, a former state chief secretary contesting his first election. Mr Gupta had been considered a close confidant of the CM in his role as the state’s top bureaucrat. This is the first time the CPI(M) has been defeated in Jadavpur since the constituency was formed in 1967.
Mr Bhattacharjee has submitted his resignation to state governor M.K. Narayanan. Ms Banerjee too went to meet the governor at Raj Bhavan on Friday evening and was invited to form a new government. The swearing-in of the Mamata Cabinet is expected to take place on Wednesday, May 18. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi both telephoned Ms Banerjee to congratulate her for a “historic victory”.
An ecstatic Mamata Banerjee compared her campaign with the country’s freedom struggle and said Friday was like a “second independence day” for West Bengal. Speaking to a sea of supporters smearing each other in green gulal (the party’s colour) outside her Kalighat residence, an emotional Ms Banerjee promised good governance for the next five years. “This is a complete victory of democracy ... A historic verdict. After 34 years, Bengal has got new freedom,” she said as her supporters distributed sweets. “This is just like a freedom struggle. We want to dedicate this victory to the people of Bengal and the motherland.”
With its uninterrupted three-decade-long rule of West Bengal ending, and losing in Kerala as well, the CPI(M) is set to lose a lot of the clout in had in New Delhi, and with a significantly reduced national presence. Tripura is now the only state it remains in power.
With the Trinamul Congress securing a clear majority on its own, a cautious Congress Party is weighing its options on the question of joining the Mamata ministry. “We want the Congress and SUCI to join the government,” the Trinamul chief announced from her Kalighat residence in South Kolkata. As of now, she has decided to keep four ministries herself, which include police affairs, education, health and industry. “All-round development” will be our objective, she declared. She could well co-opt some Left schemes — such as the rice at `2/kg and health cards for those earning less than `10,000 a year.
Ms Banerjee’s other challenges will be to put an end to blood-letting in the districts and to bring West Bengal out of the financial morass it is now in. She will also have to tackle the Maoists in Jangalmahal. The Left parties have been accusing her of being pro-Maoist. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha agitation in the hills of North Bengal will also pose a major challenge to her government.
The defeat was so resounding that the Left is now in a quandary on who to pick as Leader of the Opposition. All its top leaders, ranging from the chief minister to the finance, industry and housing ministers, have been defeated. There is hardly any major Marxist leader left who can head the Opposition front bench.
Anti-incumbency has been troubling the Left since the 2009 elections. The Trinamul’s triumph this time reflected the public outrage against its regimentation and corruption. Ms Banerjee’s slogans “Maa, Maati, Manush” (mother, earth, people) and of “paribartan” (change) found resonance with the people of the state. On Friday Ms Banerjee managed to maul the CPI(M) in its strongholds in Bankura, West Midnapore, Purulia and North Bengal. In Kolkata, the Trinamul Congress won all 11 Assembly seats. The Left also drew a blank in Howrah, East Midnapore and Darjeeling. It performed poorly in Hooghly, North and South 24-Parganas and Coochbehar.
After the CPI(M)’s defeat in the 2008 panachayat polls, the chief minister had sensed the growing public anger against the Left. The Singur and Nandigram fiascoes had already dented the Left’s image by then and had given Ms Banerjee the political and electoral springboard she was looking for ever since she launched her party in the late 1990s. The last nail in the CPI(M)’s coffin was driven by its general secretary Prakash Karat when he snapped ties with the UPA government and made a botched attempt to forge a “third front” at the national level. This opened the door for the Trinamul Congress, which went on to join forces with the Congress. And Ms Banerjee has not looked back since then.
Mr Karat’s second major mistake was his attempt to cut chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to size, particularly after the party’s losses in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. When the CM, sensing the public mood, began to issue frequent apologies over the government’s lapses, an attempt was made to overshadow him by a more aggressive Gautam Deb — who on Friday was defeated by 30,000 votes from the Dum Dum Assembly seat. The arrogance shown by Mr Deb and other CPI(M) leaders showed that party bosses both in Kolkata and New Delhi were far removed from reality.