With 24 hours to go for the outcome of the civic polls in West Bengal, there seems to be a sense of relief among the Marxist spin doctors as the exit poll predictions indicate victory for the Trinamul Congress.
The exit polls results being analysed by both the main rivals in the state go on to show that a lack of grand alliance between the TMC and the Congress could possibly hit the former, even though it could possibly manage to win both the municipalities and Kolkata Corporation. The Left leaders “hope” that if the TMC sweeps the polls, it could just decide to go alone in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Though the Left parties are shown losing in the exit polls, the outcome has also provided some “cheer in the camp”.
The exit polls for Kolkata corporation predict that while TMC is set to get 79 wards, the Left will be confined to 54, the Congress between six and 10 and BJP two.
The electoral arithmetic show that in the last Lok Sabha polls, the Left parties had managed to win only 22 wards, while the grand alliance of TMC-Congress had wrested 117 wards.
In the districts where elections were held in 81 municipalities, the Left have been predicted to win nearly 36, TMC 33 and Congress 10. In the last Lok Sabha polls, out of the 81 municipalities, the Left had won 20, while Congress and TMC a whopping 59. Though the calculations in the forthcoming Assembly polls, where elections will be held in 294 berths, would be in a larger scale, the CPI(M) leaders feel that lack of an alliance between the TMC and the Congress could help the reds in a big way.
It was also being claimed that “non-interference” by the CPI(M)’s central leadership (read party general secretary Prakash Karat) had helped the party in its attempt to salvage the situation to some extent.
A central committee member of the CPI(M) revealed that the triangular fight between Congress, Trinamul and the Left had always benefited the reds. He also pointed out that following the drubbing in the LS polls, CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had said, “I could not convince my cadre to follow the central line.” The Marxists in Bengal, including the late Jyoti Basu, had repeatedly asked the party general secretary not to snap ties with the Congress. However, a defiant general secretary went ahead and the Left parties “paid the price of his immature political decision”, the CC member said.
The Left felt that if the TMC and Congress come together during the Assembly polls, it would be “difficult for us”. A section of CPI(M) leaders was in fav-our of the leadership “making attempts to patch up with the Congress”. However, this could be difficult with the general secretary refusing to “listen to any reason”, an angry Bengal CPI(M) functionary said.