CPM on war footing ahead of polls

KOLKATA: Anticipating that the Election Commission (EC) might announce the dates for holding elections in West Bengal by the first week of March, the CPM has recently issued a circular asking all the party units to work on a war footing to complete the pending development schemes in both municipal and panchayat areas.

Interestingly, the party has also asked its activists to help poor people living in both municipal and panchayat areas in getting ration cards, BPL cards and OBC (other backward class) certificates without any hassle. The CPM activists have been instructed to help poor people to get widow pension and benefits of other social security schemes run by both the Centre and state government.

The CPM is likely to face the most crucial electoral battle this time, after their defeats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, by-elections to a number of state Assembly constituencies held last year and panchayat elections held in 2008. The CPM had also lost the elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to the Trinamool Congress last year. In all these elections, the opposition Trinamool Congress had defeated the CPM.

Now, before the crucial Assembly polls, the CPM is trying hard to win back the support of the poor and middle-class people in both urban and rural areas. For this, the party has instructed all its units to come forward and help the poor people living in these areas to extend all the facilities available for them under both the state's and Centre's administrative set up.

The state government has introduced a pension scheme for workers in the unorganised sector. The party has asked its functionaries to help these workers to fill up the forms for obtaining the pension. "We used to do all such work for the poor and muddle-class people. But, in the past few years, our workers and leaders could not carry out these jobs, for which many of the poor and backward class people have deserted our organisation," the party has admitted in its circular.