By IANS,
New Delhi : As West Bengal prepares for assembly polls, the Communist Party of India-Marxist Friday accepted that there was an erosion of support for the party in the state and that it was looking into the reasons.
“We have lost some support at ground level, we are looking into it to find the reason,” CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat told reporters here.
He, however, denied that the left parties were losing Muslim support in West Bengal.
“Erosion of support is not on community lines,” he said, “it’s not just Muslims, we have also lost support among Hindus.”
Asked about a recent report that said Muslims in Gujarat are better-off than those in West Bengal, Karat explained that the historical background was different as “most educated and affluent Muslims went to East Pakistan (Bangladesh) after the partition.”
Abu Selah Shariff, a member of the Sachar Committe and leading economist, said last week that Muslims in Gujarat were leading a better life than those in West Bengal.
The Sachar Committee, appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006, had reported that West Bengal was among the worst states for Muslims to live in.
The committee was formed to assess the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India.
“We launched land reforms soon after we came to power in Bengal and today most Muslim farmers have land. However, such things were not considered by the Sachar Committee report,” Karat said.
Karat stressed that West Bengal was the first state to implement 10 percent reservation for Muslims in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category after the Ranganath Mishra Committee report.
On whether the Nandigram-Singur incidents, where the Trinamool Congress launched anti-land acquisition protests, had eroded support for the CPI-M, Karat said the party’s manifesto clearly distinguishes between the goals of agricultural and industrial development, as it was the root of conflict.
The six-phase assembly elections in West Bengal will start April 18.