The CPI(M) seems to be reconciled to the idea that the Assembly elections in Bengal and Kerala will be a “lost” battle. In its desperate bid to retain power in the two states, at the CPI(M) extended central committee meeting held at Vijayawada, the party satraps decided to go back to the time-tested strategy of painting the Opposition as “representing the interests of the big capitalists, landlords, the rich and the vested interests that seek a strategic alliance with imperialism and who use
communalism, ultra-Left anarchy and divisive politics to achieve their objectives”. Development and industrialisation which were West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s principal poll plank in the last Assembly polls and which had paid rich dividends, have been dropped like the proverbial hot potato. The party bosses have realised that Mr Bhattacharjee’s industrial overdrive resulted in public resentment which Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee cleverly exploited in Singur and Nandigram and it helped her in trouncing the Left Front in successive elections since 2009. “The party will go all out to reaffirm its image as pro-poor and pro-farmer. Therefore, this time, it will not harp on issues like development and industrialisation because they may boomerang,” a state secretariat member said.
In fact, to regain the lost ground in rural Bengal, the CPI(M) has decided to campaign for the repeal of the Land Acquisition Act which gives power to the government to acquire a farmland even without the consent of its owner. The resolution adopted at the Vijayawada conclave last week, lauded Bengal and Kerala as the “outposts of the Left and democratic movement in the country.”
Party general secretary Prakash Karat praised the two states for implementing land reforms and upholding the rights of the working classes. It was on the strength of such powerful movements that the Communist Party won a majority in the Kerala Assembly elections in 1957, he recalled.