Poll results to widen cracks in CPM Poliburo: analysts

16 May 2009

The Left Front's debacle in the 15 Lok Sabha poll was not a surprise as everybody was expecting it, said a senior cadre of the Marxist party in Mumbai when he saw the election results trickling in from the news channels.

A staunch supporter of the Marxists since his school days, he said the policies of the Left were seen by many as arrogant and anti-reformist.
 
With just 4 out of 20 seats in Kerala, and the Congress- Trinamool combine poised to win more than half of the 42 seats, the Left has lost its last bastions. Even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reopened its account in the state with heavyweight Jaswant Singh winning the Darjeeling seat. The BJP had won two seats in the state in 1999, but then it was in alliance with the Trinamool.

In the 2004 elections, the Left Front had finished with a whopping 35 seats in West Bangal, while the Congress and the Trinamool had to be satisfied with 6 and 1, respectively.

The story was the same in Kerals too, where it had won 19 seats in the 14th Parliament.

''People were fed up with CPM's opportunism.. They had not changed their thinking with the passage of time,'' a  Left sympethiser said.

In their attack against the Congress-led UPA government, the Left parties had raised its ante against the Indo-US nuclear deal.