Calcutta, Jan. 9: The defeat by over 39,000 votes in Nandigram has got the CPM worried, Biman Bose hinted today.

The Left’s candidate, Paramananda Bharati of the CPI, lost to Trinamul’s Feroza Bibi by 39,549 votes. The former CPI MLA in Nandigram, Md. Illyas, had won the seat by 4,823 votes in 2006 — about a tenth of today’s margin.

On the sidelines of the CPM central committee meeting in Kochi, Bose said there was a need for introspection on the margin of loss. He repeated the complaints of “low-key terror” of Trinamul but also said: “ It (the result) calls for introspection.”

Bose said: “We have to look into our organisational shortcomings and campaign deficiencies. The party would have to learn these lessons.”

Feroza’s victory margin is about two and half times more than the 16,000-vote win for Trinamul in the panchayat polls in Nandigram, which comprises two blocks. The aggregate votes that the Left bagged in the four zilla parishad seats in the two blocks was about 16,000 less than what Trinamul had polled.

The CPM lost in Malda’s Sujapur, too, where the Congress’s Mausam Noor beat its candidate Haji Ketabuddin by 21,205 votes.

The CPM’s ability to retain Purulia’s Para with a margin of over 40,000 was the only face-saver.

In Calcutta, CPM state secretariat member Goutam Deb said: “The factors behind such a result (in Nandigram) can’t be identified without detailed analysis of booth-specific figures. But it can’t be explained only in terms of the Opposition’s terror tactics also.”

Tamluk MP Lakshman Seth, the CPM’s man in Nandigram, did not agree with Bose’s approach of “introspection”, at least in public, and blamed the Opposition’s terror ploys.

“What Bimanda said is a routine thing as our party always reviews every poll result,” he said. “I thought Trinamul would get a higher margin in view of the terror they had unleashed.... Our supporters voted for Trinamul as they knew we wouldn’t be able to protect them.”