'Communist mukt' India? BJP's Bengal breach obliterates Communists

Trends show the CPM has been wiped out from Kerala and losing heavily in West Bengal

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been officially routed in West Bengal — a state which had always sent a CPM leader to Parliament since Independence. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won two seats in 2014, has bagged 18 seats in West Bengal — its highest ever tally in the state. The Trinamool Congress has been reduced to 24 seats — 10 seats less than its 2014 tally, when even the communists had managed to win two seats in the state.

Mohammad Salim, the communist MP from West Bengal, lost to the BJP’s Debasree Chaudhri and finished a distant third in Raiganj. Badaroudoza Khan, the sitting Communist MP from Murshidabad, failed to finish in the top three. The seat was won by Trinamool candidate Abu Taher Khan with Congress candidate Abu Hena finishing second. Even the BJP’s Humayun Kabir had a better vote share than the communist candidate.

BJP’s ‘Bengal breach’ also echoed in Tripura where BJP candidates Rebati Tripura and Pratima Bhoumick won resoundingly to wrest the two seats from the Left Front. 

A similar story unfolded in Kerala where the party has been upended by the Congress and its allies in 19 of the 20 seats. The CPM, which had five MPs in the Lok Sabha from Kerala, was desperately fighting to win in Alappuzha. At the time of going to press, the CPM and Congress candidates were in a neck-and-neck fight with near equal vote shares and a margin of less than 10,000 votes. The Communist Party of India (CPI) also lost its only seat of Thrissur in Kerala to the Congress.

While the Left seems to have been obliterated from their bastions, they will continue to be represented in the Lok Sabha. The CPI and CPM have won two seats each in Tamil Nadu with good margins. The CPI won in the textile manufacturing town of Tiruppur, in addition to Nagapattinam, while the CPM won in the industrial town of Coimbatore, in addition to Madurai.

With these heavy losses, the communists’ representation in the Lok Sabha has reduced from 10 seats to four. While the Left was successful in mobilising farmers, who marched to cities such as Mumbai, to be associated with farmers’ causes in Sikar and Mandsaur, it doesn’t seem to have translated into electoral gains for the party.

In a statement after the verdict became clear, the CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said, “The Indian electorate has given a decisive verdict in favour of the BJP and its allies. The CPI(M) has suffered a severe setback in these elections. We shall introspect the reasons for this and draw proper lessons for the future. There are huge challenges ahead regarding the defence of our secular democratic republic, institutions of Constitutional authority, people’s rights & livelihood issues.”