The people of Bengal rejected the CPM today with all its candidates occupying distant third position.
Veteran CPM leaders, Mohammad Selim and Sujan Chakraborty, who contested from Murshidabad and Dum Dum were handsomely defeated. The young candidates, including Srijan Bhattacharya in Jadavpur, Dipsita Dhar in Srirampur and Sayan Banerjee were defeated. With this, the CPM which did not have any seat in West Bengal Assembly failed to send anyone in the Parliament too. The lone CPM Rajya Sabha MP is Bikas Bhattacharya.
The alliance of Congress and CPM did not work well for Adhir Chowdhury who was called the uncrowned king of Berhampur suffered defeat.
The poll results show that the CPM is yet to come out of the shock which it received in 2011 Assembly election when the party lost to Trinamul Congress badly. Party heavyweights Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Nirupam Sen, Asim Dasgupta, Gautam Deb were defeated. The party has not been able to repair the trauma it has been suffering since then.
From 2011, the CPM started losing all the by-elections and in most of the election the deposits of the candidates were forfeited.
In 2024, the CPM had fielded young candidates and hoped to do well in the election. Party cadres were seen on the roads. But the party’s campaign was directionless and it continued to harp on Modi-Mamata secret understanding and did not highlight important issues like unemployment and price rise. Also, the party did not have any penetration in the rural belt. In a bid to cover its own organizational weakness, it blamed Trinamul terror which came in the way in setting up organization in the rural belt.
From 2011 till date, the CPM did not do any self analysis and went on highlighting Modi- Mamata secret deal. It did not say a word when the BJP deliberately deprived Bengal. The voters did not support this stand of the party and punished the candidates in the EVM.