Calcutta, Nov. 11: The CPM leadership today admitted continued erosion in the Left Front’s support base but appeared to balk at a call from a partner to advance the Assembly polls in the wake of successive electoral debacles.

“It’s better to seek a fresh mandate and bring forward the Assembly polls to April next year instead of waiting till 2011,’’ said Kiranmoy Nanda, the fisheries minister and leader of the Bengal Socialist Party that has four MLAs.

Virtually echoing Mamata Banerjee, Nanda said: “The outcome of successive polls and bypolls have made the people’s mandate clear. We are losing the voters’ confidence while the Opposition’s victory margins are increasing steadily. The government won’t be able to deal firmly with the growing lawlessness or pursue the development agenda effectively in the prevailing deadlock situation.”

Citing the example of simultaneous Assembly and general elections in 1991, Nanda said the Left Front had then decided to advance the state polls scheduled a year later. Sources said the polls were advanced to 1991 because the then chief minister, Jyoti Basu, was confident of a return — the usual reason for bringing forward polls and something the Left lacks now.

Nanda said his party would write to Left Front chairman Biman Bose and ask for a discussion. “We should be prepared to sit on Opposition benches if people want it,” he added.

Some CPM leaders and ministers privately concurred with Nanda but the party leadership feels that the situation was different in 1991-92 and it would be “suicidal” to advance the elections as the Left Front was now going through its worst crisis in 32 years. “Our government has no history of seeking fresh mandate by resigning before its tenure ended. We had only asked to club elections earlier. The Congress government in Bengal didn’t step down after the party bagged only three seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 1977,” said a CPM leader.

While the Forward Bloc and the RSP agreed with the CPM, RSP veteran and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami wanted to consider the pros and cons of changing the election date. “We should ponder over it in view of our downslide in successive polls. But at the same time, people and our rank and file may consider it (early polls) a defeatist move,” Goswami added.

An informal meeting of the CPM state secretariat, attended by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and industries minister Nirupam Sen, today took a preliminary look at the bypoll rout and tried to assess its possible impact on the civic and Assembly polls ahead. The CPM drew a blank in the five seats it had contested this time.

CPM leaders are worried about the huge increase in the winning margins of the Opposition, particularly that of the Trinamul Congress, which suggests that the ruling party had made no headway in efforts to stem the slide that began with the panchayat polls last year.

Emerging from the meeting, Sen reflected the party’s despondency and exasperation. “Most of the 10 seats were with the Opposition earlier. But the Left didn’t suffer defeat with such huge a gap with the Opposition in the past. For us, our defeat in Rajganj and Kalchini were unprecedented. Also, we didn’t think we would lose Belgachhia East,’’ Sen said.

He was perturbed over the victory of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha-supported Independent candidate in Kalchini. “But we have accepted the people’s verdict in a democratic spirit,” Sen added.

The sources said the secretariat mostly discussed the depth of the erosion of Left support among tribals and Scheduled Castes. But a CPM leader said: “It’s not anymore confined to any particular social group as people of all strata are now asking for change.”