A pivotal test for CPI(ML)L

The 2025 Bihar Assembly polls are a pivotal test for the ‘Jhande par teen tara’ party, as ‘Bhakapa Maalay’ or Maalay, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation, has increasingly come to be known on the ground in the state.

- ARCHIS MOHAN

The CPI(ML)L, or simply ‘ML’, is not merely under pressure to repeat the impressive strike rate — it won 12 of the 19 seats it contested — it notched up in the 2020 Assembly polls. It also carries the weight of the expectations of the Left movement in the country as it marks the centenary year of the founding of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Kanpura hundred years ago, especially when the Communists are currently at their weakest electorally.

Afartougher challenge, ML’s 64-year-old chief Dipankar Bhattacharya tells Business Standard on his way to one of almost nine or 10 small meetings that he addresses on the campaign trail daily, is how his party’s legislators and candidates are being “framed in fake cases” to ensure they do not contest. ML has termed it a “systematic attack on its struggle against feudal interests”.

In Bhorey, where its candidate Jitendra Paswan lost by a mere 300 votes in 2020, the party withdrew his candidature at the last minute after he was “implicated in fake cases” and fielded former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Dhananjay instead. The party alleges that its Agiaon (in Arrah) legislator Manoj Manzil was convicted in “fake cases” and disqualified. The party’s Shiv Prakash Ranjan won the seat in a by-poll in 2024 and is contesting again.

During the campaigning, Bhattacharya and ML candidates focus on reaching out to people on foot and addressing small public meetings. “In elections, what matters is not the show of strength, which big rallies are, but persuasion, and whether you get the time to speak to people, have a conversation with them, and address questions in their minds so that they are equipped to fight the propaganda,” Bhattacharya says, as his convoy, consisting of a mere two cars, reaches a Musahar tola in Babhanpura in the Phulwari Assembly constituency, where the party’s sitting legislator Gopal Ravidas is contesting again.