The Maley Factor

From the 1940s to 2015, the Left parties in Bihar have had a shaky trajectory—from being a marginal force to becoming influential, and then again marginal. But 2025 shows hints of a revival. Can they impact the electoral outcome this time?

- By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

WHO doesn't know Dipankar Bhattacharya?” asks Santosh Kumar Singh, a Patna-based, middle-aged and soft-spoken cab driver, looking at me through the rearview mirror with disdainful eyes for asking a silly question. “Everybody knows him by his salt-and-pepper beard and back-brushed hair,” he says.

I was curious. Bhattacharya is known for his looks, and not politics? “Yes, politics, of course,” Singh says, as he navigates through a bumpy and potholed road in Bhojpur district of southwestern Bihar.

It’s a hot summer evening in June 2025. The sun is about to set, but the air is breathing fire. Google says it feels like 47° Celsius. While concentrating on the road, he keeps narrating how ‘Maley’ leaders are respected because they have always sided with the poor, live simple lives and have not been involved in corruption.

Bhattacharya is the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Lenininist) (Liberation), or CPI(ML) (Liberation) in short, which has become Ma-Le or ‘Maley’ in local parlance. It is India’s only Leftist party that has tasted electoral success after an underground stint of armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by a phase—during the 1980s and 1990s—when the party contested elections and also maintained armed squads.

During the 11 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule, it is thanks to this party that Bihar became the only state where the Left forces marked any noticeable growth.

After winning 12 assembly seats in the 2020 Bihar elections—its best performance since entering the electoral fray in 1985—Maley maintained the momentum by winning two Lok Sabha seats in 2024, which too is its best electoral show. The party also won two seats in the 2024 Jharkhand assembly election.