Calcutta, June 26: The CPM’s organisational weaknesses and its social disconnect were some of the reasons behind the civic poll rout, a large section of the party’s state committee members who attended the first day of a two-day meeting here is believed to have said.

“Our organisation failed to counter the Opposition’s canards against the government. It should be viewed as our organisational lapse. We couldn’t explain to the people that they would suffer if the Opposition came to power. Many who attended today’s meeting are of the opinion that our failure was primarily because of this social disconnect,” a state committee member said.

In a statement issued this evening, CPM state secretary Biman Bose underlined the need to “adopt programmes to get closer to the people”.

“We have noted that in some municipalities, our vote share has increased vis-a-vis the Lok Sabha figures while in some, it has decreased. The political and organisational deficiencies will have to be identified,” the statement said.

Several CPM district leaders today discussed the reports they had prepared on the poll debacle with the party’s state committee.

The district leaders pointed out that the party “had not succeeded’’ in explaining to the people the Opposition’s “anarchy’’. They said the party had failed to counter the Opposition’s “money power with our ideology’’.

A CPM source said the “miserable failure” of the party’s development plank, on which the Left had fought the elections, was also discussed.

“Development work is no longer fetching results. People have stopped voting for us, regardless of whether we work for them or not. It’s an uphill task for us now,’’ a CPM district secretary said.

The state secretariat asked the state committee members to suggest steps required to restore the support of the “poor, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the minorities”.