Trinamul celebrations in Asansol after the party victory in the municipality. (Gour Sharma)

Calcutta, July 1: The tide of anti-Left mood in Bengal has swept even more areas in the civic polls, signalling an almost certain end of the Left’s long rule in the 2011 Assembly elections.

Such was the force of the tide that the Opposition crushed the Left even without an alliance between the Congress and the Trinamul Congress —unlike in the Lok Sabha elections in May — in several of the 16 municipalities that went to the polls.

In their civic poll campaign, the CPM and its allies took pains to point out the differences between the Lok Sabha and the civic polls, but the anti-Left mood in Bengal made no such distinction.

The outcome of the elections in 10 districts across the state confirmed the voters’ continued rejection of the ruling Left Front at all levels — from panchayat to Parliament and now municipalities.

There is little to suggest that the trend would be reversed in the Calcutta civic polls next year.

Today’s results actually expose worse erosions in the Left’s support base than the parliamentary polls had indicated.

Two factors were said to have contributed largely to the Left’s rout in the Lok Sabha elections — the stability card at the Centre and the erosion of the Left’s support among the Muslims.

Stability was not an issue in the civic polls, and except in Maheshtala and Rajpur-Sonarpur, the Muslims were not a big factor in the other areas. Yet, the Left losses were huge. It can only mean a massive decline in the Left’s support among all sections of the people — Hindus and Muslims, rural and urban, middle class and poor.

The steady erosion of the CPM and its allies’ support base, both rural and urban, had become evident from the rural polls in May last year in which Trinamul almost swept south Bengal.

In the subsequent civic polls in 13 bodies in June, the 2003 result was reversed as the Opposition bagged eight with the Left losing three municipalities — Guskara and Habra in south Bengal and Dalkhola in north Bengal.

In 2004, the Left had held nine of the 15 bodies that went to the polls this time, Dankuni being a new seat. The tally has come down to three from nine with the Opposition bagging 13.

The Left’s loss of municipalities in South 24-Parganas’ Rajpur-Sonarpur and Maheshtala, North 24-Parganas’ Madhyamgram, Dum Dum and South Dum Dum, Hooghly’s Dankuni and Howrah’s Uluberia conformed to the Opposition victory in all four districts in the recent parliamentary polls.

What is more worrisome for the CPM is that the Opposition made significant advance in its bastion of Burdwan by bagging civic bodies in the industrial towns of Asansol and Kulti, though the CPM had managed to retain Asansol and the other two seats in Burdwan in the parliamentary polls.

On the other hand, the Congress’s ability to retain Sainthia in Birbhum and Trinamul’s control over the civic body in East Midnapore’s Egra, despite the defeat of its chairman, indicate continuing popular support in favour of the Opposition, particularly in Trinamul-dominated south Bengal.

In north Bengal, however, the ruling front had some solace as it gained Malbazar municipality in Jalpaiguri, thanks to an Independent candidate, and retained Gangarampur in south Dinajpur, though with reduced strength.

The Congress continued to hold sway in Kaliagunj and Islampur. But the Opposition’s entry in the Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad, for the first time in two decades, was at the cost of the Left.

In a recent review of its worst-ever debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, the CPM central committee was candid enough about the extent of its rout. It said the Left Front suffered a “major erosion” in its vote share, 7.42 per cent and 6.88 per cent in comparison to the 2004 Lok Sabha and 2006 Assembly polls, respectively.

The corresponding “substantial increase” in the vote share of the Trinamul-SUCI combine (45.67 per cent) and the BJP (6.14 percent) has made the ruling Left most vulnerable in 32 years of its rule in Bengal.

With the central committee report admitting that the “Left Front has majority only in 99 Assembly segments out of 294 for 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state”, the party leadership virtually concedes the possible impact of the national poll pattern in the coming Assembly elections.

With the Trinamul-Congress combine dominant in 182 constituencies in terms of the Lok Sabha poll outcome, the odds for the CPM and its allies become apparently insurmountable. The central committee pointed out that the Left managed to get more than 50 per cent votes only in 41 of the 99 Assembly segments.