The daily gave prominent space to party secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra’s comment “we accept the people’s verdict, but our fight in the interest of the people will continue”. “The Opposition had joined hands against us but the people have given us a huge victory”, she said. After the 2011 state assembly polls, Prakash Karat, the then secretary of the CPM had announced that the Trinamool Congress victory was a “distortion” as the polls were rigged. Also, with the Congress suffering such humiliating defeats in Assam and Kerala, and also in Tamil Nadu where it was the junior partner in the alliance led by the DMK, the party is not expected to keep up its trenchant and unprincipled opposition to the BJP.
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The TMC which had won 185 seats in 2011 and managed 39 per cent vote share in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections upped its vote percentage by six points. “But its strength reflects from the fact that its supporters mobilised people on the ground when they realised their party might be in danger.” said Kolkata-based political scientist Ranabir Samaddar. The Congress-CPM alliance secured a vote share of 37% and the BJP around 10.2% down from the 17.5 % of the Lok Sabha results but up from the 6.5% of the panchayat and local local body polls of 2013. As a habit and due to my passion towards political developments, I used to ask people about Mamata Banerjee’s impact in Bengal polity. It toned down its campaign against Mamata Banerjee’s misdeeds and misgovernance and the involvement of her party in the Saradha scam.
“It [tie-up] has been the greatest blunder for the CPI(M) for State politics and for the Congress, it is a blunder for their national politics”, she said.
“BJP is not a fool to have any kind of understanding with the Trinamol”. If the Didi juggernaut swept the Congress-Left mahagathbandhan aside, reducing the Left to its worst performance ever, the Amma of Poes Garden in Chennai showed that the idea of a Third Front and a multi-cornered contest in Tamil Nadu was simply a chimera. In a war, you lose some battles, you win some battles. “We are happy. We had won only one seat in a by-election in 2014”.
Unfortunately, in West Bengal attacks are mounting on voters by the hooligans of the ruling Trinamool, with tacit support from a section of state police.
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The Left Front major CPI-M’s Bengali mouthpiece Ganashakti came up with a banner headline “Sarkar fer Trinamooleri” (Trinamool again forms government).
