By NNN-PTI,
Kolkata, India : The CPI(M)-led Left Front’s 30-year-rule in West Bengal is facing threat after a setback in recent panchayat (village) elections.
The results were seen as a referendum on Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s policy of acquiring agricultural land for industrial development.
While the land reforms policy is being viewed as the reason its uninterrupted three decades of rule, the Left brigade suffered a washout in areas which the chief minister tried to industrially showcase by inviting big businesses and foreign direct investments (FDI).
Voters in Singur, the site of Tata’s small car plant, gave the CPI (M) a drubbing in all three zilla parishad seats which went to the Trinamool Congress.
In Nandigram, where the state government faced a bloody protest by anti-SEZ activists for about two years, the Front faced a humiliating defeat in elections.
The results showed that the Left Front managed to hold on to the zilla parishads (upper tier), panchayat samities (middle tier) and gram panchayats (lower tier) where the threat of farmers losing the land was non-existent.
It was wiped out in East Midnapur and South 24 Paragans districts and suffered setback in Nadia, Hooghly and Howrah where land was either acquired or there was a perceived threat of land acquisition.