Calcutta, May 16: The CPM and its allies are saying that the front leadership as a whole, and not individual leaders, should be blamed for the poll debacle.
“As chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee definitely was the face of the government and Nirupam Sen was his de-facto deputy. Naturally, they have to take some amount of individual responsibility for our defeat. But we should not blame them alone. What were the rest of the CPM leaders doing?” asked Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas.
“The CPM politburo, including general secretary Prakash Karat, could not ensure a course correction by the party’s state unit despite repeated warnings from us allies post Singur and Nandigram,” he added.
RSP veteran and outgoing PWD minister Kshiti Goswami, who lost to the Congress’s D.P. Roy in Alipurduar, said all Left Front partners should “evaluate the leadership’s role”.
He criticised Bhattacharjee’s style of functioning. “He became intolerant, arrogant and dismissive of opinions from senior cabinet colleagues and front leaders. Wrong policies, arrogance and alienation from people brought us down,’’ Goswami said.
He, however, said Bhattacharjee should not step down from the politburo and the central committee. “It will demoralise the Left’s rank and file, particularly that of the CPM, at a time our cadres are being attacked,’’ Goswami said.
Kiranmoy Nanda, Samajwadi Party leader and outgoing fisheries minister, said: “The writing on the wall was clear after Singur and Nandigram. Our supporters began perceiving us as pro-capitalists,’’ Nanda said.
“If the CPM had paid heed to my proposal of going to the polls soon after the Lok Sabha debacle in 2009, we might still have been defeated but we would not have had to face the shame of such a rout. But they never cared to take us (allies) into confidence either in the functioning of the government or in the front,’’ he added.
Nanda, who lost from Raiganj, refused comment when asked if Bhattacharjee should remain in the party’s highest decision-making bodies. “It’s their internal matter,’’ he said.
District leaders of the CPM chose their words with caution when asked the same question but said any change in the top leadership now would not be beneficial for the party. “One may be emotional and sensitive but the emotions should be controlled at the time of crisis. The role of certain individuals can’t be denied but all important decisions had been taken collectively,’’ said Amitabha Basu, the secretary of the CPM’s North 24-Parganas unit.
A CPM leader who was defeated in the polls this time listed the party’s “two cardinal sins” that led to the debacle. “Bhattacharjee and (outgoing industries minister) Nirupam Sen’s aggressive land-acquisition drive and Prakash Karat’s decision to withdraw support to UPA-I culminated in the Left’s fall. If Buddhada steps down, so should Prakash,’’ he said.
The CPM state committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss the defeat in the polls. Several leaders admitted that the party machinery had “failed to gauge the people’s mood and report the ground realities to the top leadership truthfully”.
“It would not be incorrect to say that many of our rank and file do not speak their minds or send reports truthfully. Many of them say what the leaders want to hear. We have to change this mindset,’’ said Basu, the North 24-Parganas’ leader.
Another leader said it was because of such faulty reporting that Left Front secretary Biman Bose had predicted that the front would win close to 200 seats.
Although Bose admitted a “failure in assessing the people’s mood”, some leaders such as outgoing housing minister Gautam Deb put up a brave face by saying: “We do not have any machine to read the mind of the people.’’
Sujan Chakroborty, the secretary of the CPM’s South 24-Parganas unit, said: “We could not understand the people’s minds as they kept mum this time. There was definitely a disconnect with the people.”
