Elections in West Bengal tend to run on predictable lines. When the Left held sway, it took no special skill to read the electoral tea leaves. The elections to the Lok Sabha earlier this year broke the Left’s hold over West Bengal. Since then, it has become clear with every election result, at whatever level, that the people of the state want change and that they are tired of the Left’s dominance. It is not difficult to predict that votes will be cast in favour of the Trinamul Congress and its leader, Mamata Banerjee. The latest round of election results only confirms that the voting trend continues to be in favour of Ms Banerjee. On the face of it, Ms Banerjee’s triumph seems unstoppable. The Left, especially the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is caught in a situation where it can do precious little to prevent the continuing, and massive, erosion of its electoral support base. It would not be an exaggeration to conclude that only in a few seats is a communist candidate destined to win. This is a complete reversal from the time when a CPI(M) candidate was a certainty as a winner. The CPI(M) is not only at a loss to stop the erosion, it is also incapable of explaining to itself and to others why the debacle is taking place. It continues to mouth party platitudes as explanations.

It would be simplistic, however, to see the election results as a verdict in a TMC versus CPI(M) conflict. There is another loser: the Congress appears to be nowhere in the political scene of West Bengal. At one level, this is not surprising since the Congress has been leaderless in West Bengal longer than anyone in the Congress high command cares to remember. The Congress leadership, deliberately or otherwise, appears to have chosen to hand over West Bengal to Ms Banerjee. She dominates the entire anti-Left space, and now with the fall in the Left’s support, she is close to dominating the entire political space. If she is allowed, by sheer default on the part of the Congress high command, to become the tsarina of West Bengal politics, the Congress might regret it more than the comrades. Her dominance will inevitably enhance her bargaining power not only in the run-up to the assembly polls in 2011 but also within the United Progressive Alliance. The Congress may have let loose a genie from the bottle that is set to defeat the Left, but which is not amenable to any control if allowed an unfettered run over West Bengal.