Get cracking for tough LS polls: Biman to cadre

KOLKATA: The CPM state committee has urged party units to start oiling its election machinery. As part of its drive to revv up the election machinery, the party���s state leadership has instructed all units to set up committees in all the 51,919 booths where polling will be conducted during the coming Lok Sabha polls.

State secretary Biman Bose told a two-day meeting of the CPM state committee that the party and the Left Front would face a testing situation this time while contesting the Lok Sabha elections as ���rightist parties��� like Trinamool Congress, Congress and Left extremist forces like CPI (Maoist) have joined hands to hatch a conspiracy against the government and to prevent it from carrying out development activities and industrialisation of the state.

Placing a report before state committee members, Mr Bose added that fear of land acquisition among rural population coupled with the government���s failure to deliver on promises had played a crucial role behind the Left Front���s defeat in the May 2008 panchayat elections.

In some pockets of West Bengal like in the districts of South 14-Parganas, East Midnapore, Nadia and North 24-Parganas the CPM and its allies in the ruling coalition had fared poorly in the panchayat elections. Trinamool Congress had managed to establish victory in about 50 per cent of the gram panchayat seats during the May election, which was unprecedented in the history of West Bengal���s political scenario.

Losing such a high percentage of the gram panchayat seats indicated the CPM���s failure to retain its hold on the rural electorate which was once a CPM stronghold. Though panchayat and parliamentary elections are characteristically different and issues involved in these polls also vary significantly, CPM isn���t taking too easily to the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and has sent alerts to its grassroot units which provide a support base to the party.

Informing state party leaders about the deliberations of the party���s three-day central committee meeting held in Kochi from January 8, Mr Bose added that the central leadership wanted the state party unit in West Bengal to hasten the electioneering process and prepare for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls without waiting for the Election Commission (EC) to announce the poll dates.

The Left Front had wreaked havoc on the Trinamool in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, winning 35 of 42 seats. Mamata Banerjee was the only Trinamool Congress candidate who had managed to win the elections during 2004 Lok Sabha polls. But since 2004, the political scenario in the state has changed a lot, especially in the aftermath of Singur and Nandigram. The CPM too has lost its grip in certain pockets and party stalwarts are busy planning measures to regain their lost grounds in those areas.