WB CPM plans to set up 51919 booth committees

KOLKATA: The two-day CPIM state committee meeting which concluded on Saturday took stock of recent political developments in West Bengal ahead of the forthcoming parliamentary elections. What's more, state party leaders like the politburo member and state unit secretary Biman Bose have urged party units to start oiling its election machinery.

As part of its drive to revv up the party election machinery, the CPIM state leadership has instructed all party units to set up committees in all the 51,919 booths in the state where polling will be conducted during the coming Lok Sabha polls.

Mr Bose is learnt to have told party leaders attending the two-day session 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 the 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 CPIM 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 CPIM's failure to retain its hold on the rural electorate which was once a CPIM stronghold. Though panchayat and parliamentary elections are characteristically different and issues involved in these polls also vary significantly, CPIM 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 CPIM and the Left Front in West Bengal had wreaked havoc during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections by winning 35 of the total 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 CPIM too has lost its grip in certain pockets and party stalwarts are busy planning measures to regain their lost grounds in those areas.