New Delhi: The Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M), held dominance if the clocks turned back to 1996. The party’s leader, Jyoti Basu, held the chair
of chief minister of West Bengal for 20 years and almost became the Prime Minister as part of the United Front.
Back in 2008, the left was ruling three states- West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. With over 60 MPs in the Lok Sabha, the Left Front withdrew support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, giving a floor test to the UPA government.
But now, just after two decades, the Left Front is likely to be wiped out in India. Currently, the Left Front has the power in Kerala, but the current trends indicate that this will be the first time since 1970 that the Left Front will not be in power in any of the states across India.
The Rise of Left
At the time of the first elections in India in 1951-52, the Left Front had the highest number of seats among Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha. Later in 1957, CPI(M) won the Kerala elections and marked the first-ever left-wing party to win an Assembly election.
After that, the CPI(M)’s major run came in 1977, when the party won the elections in West Bengal, and Jyoti Basu became the chief minister of the state and held the chair for over 23 years. Then handed over the chair to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in 2000.
At that period, the Left Front also made Tripura its stronghold by winning the elections. In 1993, CPI(M) alone won 44 seats out of 60 in the Assembly polls.
The Fall of Left
The fall began for the Left Front in 2011, when people were riding to see a change, and protests against land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur made the way for Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal as the Trinamool Congress dominated the 2011 elections. The left front was reduced to just 62 seats, down from 235 in the 2006 elections.
Later on, after the BJP came into power in 2014, the saffron wave reached to the Tripura and blew up the CPI(M) number from 50 to a mere 16.
Kerala was the only state where the Left had power under Pinarayi Vijayan, and with the trends, the power was changing between LDF and UDF after every term, but under Vijayan, the Left Front changed the trend and won back-to-back elections in 2016 and 2021.
But now things are not looking good, as Congress-led UDF crossed the 100-seat mark and is set to hand a big loss to the Left.
