By IANS,
Kolkata/Delhi : The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Wednesday rejected Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s demand for early assembly elections in West Bengal following Trinamool’s victory in the civic polls, and added that the party was yet to make a turnaround after its debacle in last year’s Lok Sabha elections.
“Only 16 percent of the states’ electorate has taken part in the civic polls. Based on that alone such a demand smacks of a certain mindset, which is against the overall understanding of the constitutional process,” CPI-M leader Nilotpal Basu told IANS in Delhi.
The CPI-M leader said there was one year still left for the assembly polls and the Left Front would be able to reverse the downslide.
In Kolkata, CPI-M central committee member Mohammad Salim said the process of revitalising the party’s organisation to regain the people’s faith was not yet complete.
“The process of regaining lost ground that started after the 2009 general elections has not yet been completed. It is a democracy and in elections sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. We will look into the micro-level reasons at what went wrong,” said Salim.
In last year’s general election, the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine along with Socialist Unity Centre of India bagged 26 Lok Sabha seats out of 42.
After the Lok Sabha election results were declared, the CPI-M started what it called a “rectification process” within the party and senior leaders urged party members to reach out to the people.
“Preliminary results indicate that there has been a very little improvement,” conceded CPI-M politburo member and state Industries Minister Nirupam Sen.
He said there could be multiple reasons behind the result, which needed to be reviewed.
“Right now I cannot comment any more because we will have to review the results within the party. Then only the reason will come out,” Sen said.
The Trinamool Congress Wednesday wrested control of the prestigious Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) in an electoral sweep of the civic polls that saw it humble West Bengal’s ruling Left Front across the state.
The state’s urban voters gave the thumbs down to the Left, which suffered a humiliating defeat although the major opposition parties, the Trinamool Congress and the Congress, failed to come to an electoral understanding.
The outcome is considered a huge blow to the Left, which had been in control of 54 of the 81 civic bodies, including KMC, which saw polling.