However, the CPI (M) contested more than three quarters of the Left’s 200 seats, while the Congress announced candidates for 90. However, it is now the second largest party after the Trinamool Congress in the Assembly.
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While WBPCC president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, too, said the alliance was not a mistake, the party can hardly claim to have done better than 2011 when it won 42 seats which increased by two in 2016.
Another prominent TMC leader Madan Mitra who was in jail in connection with Saradha chit fund scam, lost. Both the Congress and the CPI (M) have been fierce contenders for power in the state and the West Bengal experiment is viewed as a dilution of the party’s position of going it alone at the Centre.
But contrary to the poll predictions, the saffron party is winning some seats.
The BJP should capitalise on all these and win the people’s trust and confidence and, by 2021, emerge as the principal opposition to the Trinamool in West Bengal.
Nearly all the front-line leaders of the Trinamool, including its supremo Mamata Banerjee, occupied the pole position in their respective constituencies.
Banerjee will going to take oath of office on May 27 and her new government should be in place by May 29.
Trinamool Congress’ celebrity nominees stole the show while those of the BJP failed to make their mark as votes for the West Bengal assembly polls were counted on Thursday.
“While Mamata single-handedly steered Trinamool to victory, the people voted for her because they did not get an alternative”. With no fresh blood to energise it, no charismatic leader to challenge Mamata’s dominant personality and no programme of action to pull Bengal out of its moribund poverty and low level development, the Left was doomed from the beginning. Commenting on the poor performance of the Left-Congress combine, Poll analysts said it appears that there was transfer of votes from the Left to Congress, but the Congress voters did not transfer their votes to the Left candidates. But then it went down as we had no proper organisation to support it.
In Tamil Nadu, the Parliamentarian said the People’s Welfare Front (PWF), of which the CPI (M) was part of along with CPI, DMDK, MDMK, VCK and others – was “squeezed out” in the bipolar contest with the AIADMK and DMK, which he accused, used “money for votes”. The Congress said the alliance lost because it could not win the trust of the people.
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The BJP, which in the 2011 Assembly elections had got four per cent vote share and 17 per cent votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, managed to retain about 10 per cent vote share.
