Ideology made way for political expediency as CPI-M general secretary, Sitaram Yechuri announced joining forces with Trinamul Congress against BJP on a national platform even as the party whose governments’ writ ran in West Bengal for 34 years and Tripura for more than three decades will follow a different path in these two states.

It would be a politically adversarial path to Trinamul in West Bengal while the Tripura leadership will chalk out its own game plan. The strategies for the two
states are as different from each other as chalk is to cheese. Moreover, it gives rise to more questions than it answers.

Weeks before the announcement of the party general secretary, once a Rajya
Sabha members from this state made a “policy variance”, a different idea was voiced in West Bengal. Left Front chairman Biman Bose had said that it does not matter whom the party has to close ranks within its nationwide struggle
with the BJP.

Bose said this in response to a specific question of whether CPI-M will be chary of Trinamul’s company in a political struggle against BJP. Obviously, the front chairman with a greater feel of the political pulse of West Bengal though not to the same as Tripura knew what he was talking about.

The front chairman is only too aware that CPI-M’s organisational base in states apart from West Bengal and Tripura are not strong enough to take on the saffron camp. Bose’s contention was rooted in reality when he excluded neither Bengal nor Tripura in the nationwide struggle together with Trinamul against BJP.

In fact, such organisational strength will give the CPIM greater bargaining power with parties in the other states when they seek seats in West Bengal and Tripura. In the backdrop of this ideological brainstorming, CPI-M’s poll
performance, its worst-ever tally of a nought in the recent Assembly polls comes to mind.

People reposing greater faith in Trinamul than the CPI-M to keep away BJP has been ascribed by Yechuri as the reason behind the poor show. Had he delved deeper he would have across the people’s resentment of the long
memory of the Left Front rule and the scars it has left behind in people’s psyche not only made Trinamul victorious but elevated BJP to the status of the principal Opposition party for the first time on the state Assembly.