Another defeat

Calcutta, May 16: The Nano lost its second battle today.

In October, the Left-led government failed to keep the people’s car project in Bengal. Today, the Left parties failed to ride it to win urban votes against Mamata Banerjee.

In its worst poll performance in over three decades, the Left lost all the six parliamentary constituencies — Calcutta South, Calcutta North, Jadavpur, Dum Dum, Barasat and Howrah — in which its main poll plank was Mamata’s anti-industry image.

To counter the Trinamul Congress chief’s Maa, Maati, Maanush chant, the Left had drawn up a poll campaign with the exit of the Nano as one of the central themes. By pitching the world’s cheapest car against Mamata’s giant cut-outs, CPM strategists tried to woo urban voters by blaming Mamata for the shift of the Tata Motor’s small car plant from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat.

But the strategy of holding Mamata responsible for Bengal’s failure in becoming Detroit did not pay off and left the CPM wondering what went wrong.

“In the past few years, the party was getting more acceptable among the urban voters and that got reflected even during the Calcutta Municipal Corporation polls…. So, we did not expect such a rout in the city and its suburbs,” a senior CPM leader said.

Among the six constituencies in and around the city, Calcutta North consists entirely of urban voters while more than 90 per cent of Calcutta South is urban.

“Pro-industry stance of a party is expected to woo a majority of urban voters who depend on industry and service sectors for their livelihood. But it seems that hasn’t worked this time and that comes as a surprise,” said a professor of economics at St Xavier’s College.

A case in point is Calcutta South from where Mamata won by a margin of 2,19,571 votes by bagging 57.19 per cent votes.

Despite the predominantly urban character of all the seven Assembly segments — Kasba, Behala East, Behala West, Calcutta Port, Bhowanipore, Rashbehari and Ballygunge — she got more than 51 per cent votes in each of them.

Trinamul’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay also got more than 51 per cent votes in all the seven Assembly segments in Calcutta North — Chowringhee, Entally, Beleghata, Jorasanko, Shyampukur, Manicktala and Kashipur-Belgachhia.

The CPM’s Sujan Chakraborty lost to Trinamul’s Kabir Suman by 56,706 votes in Jadavpur constituency by upsetting all party calculations. Though the CPM had expected that the Jadavpur Assembly segment would give Sujan a decisive lead, the poll outcome told a different story. In 2004, Sujan got a lead of over 23,000 votes from this Assembly segment, which came down to around 19,000 this time.

“There hasn’t been any split in Opposition votes this time and there has been a nation-wide sweep in favour of the Congress. But it is clear that issues like the exit of the Nano has failed to create much impact among the urban voters,” a senior CPM leader said.

Sanjukta Ganguly, a first-time voter in Barasat constituency, tried to explain why the Nano issue failed to prevail over Maa, Mati, Manush. The dentist said she the exit of Tata Motors from Singur had upset her but she did not consider the pullout while casting her vote.

“A project’s relocation cannot be a poll issue. Mamata has been successful in projecting herself as a leader who stands by the people and that’s why her party has done well,” she said. The Left’s failure to solve the unemployment problem was a much more important issue.

The Left’s role as an ally of the UPA for over four years also cost it dearly in the urban constituencies which supported Mamata’s change chant and gave her a thumping victory.

“The only high point for them was pulling out of the government on the nuclear deal issue… Instead of supporting the government from outside and creating trouble on major policy issues, they should have joined the government and done something for the people of the state,” said Deep Banerjee, a techie in his early thirties.