Organisational deficiency, Trinamool's terror caused shrinking votebank: CPI-M

The CPI-M Tuesday said its failure to activate the party organisation ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and resist atrocities led loose by the ruling Trinamool Congress have contributed to the "unexpected erosion" in its support in the general election in West Bengal.

In a statement after holding a preliminary review of the Lok Sabha polls, where it won only two of the 42 seats to record its worst performance in the state since its formation 50 years back, the Communist Party of India-Marxist's Bengal state committee noted the rise of the BJP and the success of the Trinamool in retaining its votebank.

"The Bharatiya Janata Party has increased its strength in the state. The Trinamool Congress, which fought the election alone, more or less succeeded in retaining its strength," the state committee said after day one of its parleys in the presence of party general secretary Prakash Karat.

It said the "unexpected erosion" in the Left Front's support base and the victory of the rightist forces signalled a "dangerous trend".

The party conceded that the BJP reaped the fruits of an anti-Congress wave, while the call for any other alternative did not cut much ice among the people.

Accusing the Trinamool of unleashing "atrocities" and indulging in "massive vote loot", the statement said there was a need for an objective evaluation into the political reasons and terror that shaped the voting percentages of the Left Front and the Trinamool.

"There were both political and organisational reasons for the outcome. We could not keep our electoral organisation adequately active in all the regions. In many areas we could not resist the atrocities. In areas where there has been a continuity of organisational work the loss of erosion in votes has been relatively less."

Apart from Karat, politburo members Sitaram Yechuri and Manik Sarkar also attended the state committee session which would end Tuesday.

The meeting took place against the backdrop of an unprecedented resentment among the workers against the party leadership following a string of electoral setbacks.

In the lead up to the meeting, posters appeared outside district offices asking leaders to change their lifestyle and way of functioning. A motley group of current and expelled leaders even brought out a march that ended close to the state party headquarters Muzaffar Ahmed Bhawan, the venue of the state committee meeting, calling for a change of leadership.

Even former party stalwart and ex Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee has gone public supporting the demand for the present leadership to step down by taking moral responsibility for the virtual washout and make way for a new set of faces.