The CPM has decided to hold a special session on Monday at the ongoing state conference to draw up year-wise projects for the next three years and discuss the way forward for the party now struggling organisationally and electorally to make a mark in Bengal, a state it had ruled without a break for 34 years.

“Tomorrow (Monday) there will be a special session to give directions for the party’s future course.... This will be a first-of-its-kind session,” CPM state secretary Md Salim said at a media briefing on the second day of the 27th state conference being held at Dankuni in Hooghly.

Asked for the reason for a special session when leaders were engaged in talks in the ongoing state meet, a CPM leader replied: “Extraordinary crisis requires extraordinary responses.”

Ever since the CPM lost power to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in 2011, the party suffered electorally and organisationally with the BJP becoming the main Opposition force in Bengal.

In the last two elections — 2021 Assembly and 2024 Lok Sabha polls — the Left Front could not win a single seat. The electoral spoils were shared largely between the Trinamool and the BJP with the ISF winning the Bhangar seat in 2021 and the Congress bagging the Malda Dakshin seat in 2024.

On Monday’s special session, the party will try to search for a way to break the Bengal stalemate. Several leaders attending the deliberations at Dankuni did admit to a sense of disappointment among the cadres as the CPM has failed to make any electoral headway despite the party and its mass organisations launching several programmes since the last state conference in 2022.

“We have been trying to tell the people about the jobless scenario under the corrupt TMC and the fascist BJP in the state and country, respectively. We have held several programmes including the RG Kar movement to demand justice for the raped and murdered doctor. In 2023, the 50-day Insaf Yatra of the DYFI, demanding the right to work and education, evoked a good response across Bengal. The march culminated in a huge rally at the Brigade Parade ground rally on January 7, 2024, and it had given hope to the cadres as the party went into the Lok Sabha polls. But the outcome of the polls did not reflect it.... We expect the special session will provide the guidance for a way out of the crisis,” he said.

Speaking to this newspaper, Salim said the party would prepare year-based programmes at the special session. “At the session, we will plan a few special projects and give party comrades a message in advance... regarding movements, organisation and elections and how we will conduct them.”

Salim accused the TMC and the BJP of using “foreign funds” to influence Bengal’s poll outcomes, his comment coming in the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s claim that the previous American administration had given $21 million to influence the outcome of the 2024 elections in India.

Demanding a white paper on the alleged use of foreign funds, Salim told The Telegraph: “The state and central governments should come out with a white paper on the use of foreign funds. The BJP was accusing the Congress of getting funds but now everyone knows the BJP is the biggest beneficiary of foreign money. In Bengal, since the time of Singur and Nandigram movements, the TMC has also gained from such funds as well as corporate funding.”