Defying diktat of the party mandarins not to criticise the party line in public, former state land and land reforms minister and state committee member of the Marxist party Abdur Rezzak Mollah on Wednesday fired another salvo against the party satraps.

Is it the shock effect of the poll drubbing? In an “upside down world”, the Marxist party is really in a quandary over choosing a leader of the Opposition in West Bengal Assembly. With all the bigwigs, including party two politburo members Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen, losing the election, the CPI(M) mandarins are left with only one option: to choose between party central committee member Suryakanta Mishra and state committee member Abdur Rezzak Mollah.

Demolished by the Trinamul wave, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who resigned as the chief minister on Sunday offered to quit from both politburo and the central committee of the CPI(M).

Initially he wanted to be the Deng Xiaoping (who was instrumental in China’s economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 60s) of Bengal but Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ended up as the Mikhail Gorbachev of the Marxist party. Buddhadeb’s similarity to Gorbachev was evident when he like the former ideologue of

The drubbing and debacles of the Marxist party in the polls seem to have completed a full circle with all the bigwigs in the previous Cabinet, including chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Nirupam Sen, Gautam Deb, Ashok Bhattacharjee ending up as big losers in the polls. The million dollar question which has now cropped up

Now that all the exit polls have predicted the exit of Left Front, the million-dollar question being asked is: what role will Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee play in the changed circumstances?

Unfazed by the prediction of the Trinamul Congress-Congress alliance’s sweeping victory, Left Front chairman Biman Bose on Tuesday dismissed the exit poll results as “bogus”. Referring to the exit poll results of the Assembly polls of 2001 and 2006, which eventually turned out to be “big jokes”, Mr Bose asserted that the Left Front forming the government for the eighth term is only a matter of time.

Jangalmahal, the war-zone of the Maoists and the Marxist party, will go to polls on May 10, raising a big question.

The real test for the CPI(M)’s recovery story of the Muslim vote bank will be on Wednesday in the third phase of polls in Bengal.
After Murshidabad and Malda, the three districts — North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and Kolkata which will go to polls on Wednesday — have a considerable chunk of Muslim voters.

CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat on Thursday said that the WikiLeaks report revealed that the US wants the Trinamul Congress to come to power in Bengal and Mamata Banerjee to become the chief minister. He asked Ms Banerjee to clear her stand.