Red Pennants Flying

With new offices and rallies, a resurgent CPI(M) eyes better results in next year’s assembly polls in Bengal

- Suvojit Bagchi in Calcutta

A blizzard of coronavirus is blowing over West Bengal, with a patchwork of lockdowns speckling the state. Even so, sseveral citizens, like the state’s political grandees, have their sights trained on next year’s assembly polls. Kader Mollah, a 40-year-old carpenter, waits for the doctor’s summons at the end of a corridor in the Ronald Ross building of Calcutta’s SSKM hospital. A resident of the Sunderbans, Mollah shifted his allegiance to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) a few years ago from the CPI(M)—a common migration. The fate of the 2021 state polls, he says, hinges on one question: “Whether 20 per cent of the Left’s vote that shifted to the BJP in 2019 returns to the Left, or at least half of it.”

While it may not be the only factor, it surely is a key one; a reason for the TMC to ensure that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) opens its off­ ices everywhere—premises that were destroyed or taken over after the Trinamool came to power in 2011—and organises rallies. “In our area, the CPI(M) has opened offices and in­ creased its ground presence,” says Mollah. The Left’s comeback, calcu­lates the TMC, will rebound to its favour in its fight with a resurgent, aggressive BJP. By this maths, if the anti­TMC vote gets divided between the Left and the BJP—unlike in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when the BJP bagged 18 of 42 seats—victory is en­sured. The BJP’s lead in 121 of 294 assembly segments in 2019 gave CM Mamata Banerjee’s party a fright too.