KOLKATA: Once a formidable force in West Bengal politics, the CPM-led Left Front will be fighting one of its toughest political battles in this Lok Sabha polls to prove its political and electoral existence in the state.
"This election indeed will be one of our toughest political battles in Bengal. We had never thought that we would be in such a position in state politics. We hope things will change in the days to come once people realise that only the Left, and not the BJP, can provide an alternative to the TMC," CPM politburo member Hannan Mollah told PTI.
"It is a fight to prove our political and electoral existence and hold ground against the BJP. It's true that you can't wipe out the Left, but at the same time you need to be electorally significant to make your voice heard in parliamentary politics," another senior CPM leader said.
Besides the CPM, the 10-party Left Front has All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Communist Party of India (CPI) as its key constituents which contest Lok Sabha polls in the state.
The CPM as well as the Left Front has won only two of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state in 2014 polls.
The Left Front had initiated a seat sharing deal with the Congress but the talks failed at the last moment and both the sides decided to go it alone.
"Had we been able to clinch the seat sharing deal, results in various seats would have been different. We could have been a more credible secular alternative to the TMC," CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said.
Party insiders said, after the failure of seat sharing dialogues, the CPM is at its wits end on how to retain its two seats. Over the years, the party has lost its vote bank of the minorities and rural Bengal to the TMC and refugee vote bank to the BJP.
Adding to its woes, the present Left leadership lacks the dynamism of Jyoti Basu and former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who despite being ill is still the tallest leader of the CPM and the Left in Bengal.
According to an internal party report, the CPM does not have organisation to arrange for polling agents in at least 30 per cent of the 77,000 polling stations of the state.
Over the years since Independence, the Left witnessed a steady growth in the state.
In 1964, after the split in the party over ideological issues and formation of the CPM, the latter outsmarted the CPI to establish itself as the prime Left force in West Bengal.
During the tumultuous days of Naxalite movement, the CPM along with the Bangla Congress, a splinter group of the Congress, formed two short lived governments in the state in 1967 and 1969.
The party under the leadership of Basu and Promode Dasgupta had become an alternative to the Congress in Bengal.
After the CPM-led Left Front came to power in 1977, its key programmes 'Operation Barga' - giving land to landless farmers which benefited lakhs including Muslims - and setting up of three-tier pancahayat system cemented its support base among the minorities and the rural Bengal.
These two vote banks turned to be blank cheques for the Left for next three decades to win one election after another in the state.