Kolkata: After 32 years, West Bengal's seemingly impregnable red fort collapsed on Saturday with the opposition Trinamool Congress tasting victory in two thirds of the seats alongside its allies including the Congress. The communist-led ruling Left Front has come up with its worst performance since coming to power in 1977.
The Trinamool-Congress-Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) combine bagged 26 seats, reducing the Left Front to 15, of the 42 seats in the state. Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) heavyweight Jaswant Singh won the Darjeeling seat.
In the 2004 elections, the Left Front had finished with a whopping 35 seats, while the Congress and the Trinamool had to be satisfied with six and one, respectively.
But this time, the LF lost 20 of the seats it won five years back.
While the Trinamool won 19, the Congress got half a dozen, and the SUCI candidate emerged victorious from Jaynagar in South 24 Parganas.
Soon after the results, Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee described the poor showing of the Left Front as a "no confidence" vote by the people and, eager to capitalise on the party's spectacular win, demanded that the state assembly polls slated for 2011 be advanced.
"We will try to pre-pone the assembly elections. After all, this vote is an expression of no-confidence in the state government," Banerjee told newspersons at her residence here.
Tracing its defeat to a pro-Congress wave, the Left Front accepted the verdict, saying "people have taught us a lesson" and promised correctional steps.
"We have accepted the results of this poll. People have taught us a lesson. We will try to analyse why we lost by such a margin. We will take up correctional steps as soon as possible. It's an unprecedented defeat," LF chairman Biman Bose told reporters.
Among LF partners, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) secured nine - the first time its haul came to single digit in 32 years. The BJP also made a breakthrough, despite its erstwhile alliance partner Trinamool shifting allegiance to the Congress, by wresting Darjeeling, from where Jaswant Singh won by a big margin of 253,291 votes. Singh defeated CPI-M nominee Jibesh Sarkar. The BJP had won two seats in 1999, but then it was in alliance with the Trinamool.
The Left Front's seat count eclipsed its previous lowest tally of 26 in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections.
The LF has been decimated in five districts in and around Kolkata, besides facing the wrath of Muslims, angry over the violent incidents in Nandigram and the Sachar Committee report that pulled up the LF government for the backwardness of the minority committee. The defeat of the CPI-M in its stronghold of Uluberia - from where its candidate Hannan Mollah won eight times consecutively - is a pointer to this.
Out of the 19 districts, the LF has been wiped out in 10.
The LF, however, succeeded in retaining its base in the Maoist-dominated western belt of Bankura, Purulia and Mindapore West, besides doing well in Burdwan district.
Two senior state ministers lost - Sailen Sarkar (Malda North) and Anisur Rahman Sarkar (Murshidabad).
Among the prominent candidates who have won are External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee from Jangipur, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee from her pocket borough of Kolkata South and CPI-M leader in the outgoing Lok Sabha Basudeb Acharya from Bankura.
The heavyweights who have lost are deputy leader of the CPI-M Mohammed Salim from Kolkata North, CPI-M nominee and former Asian Games double gold medal winning athlete Jyotirmoyee Sikdar, former union minister and BJP candidate Satya Brata Mukherjee (both from Krishnanagar) and state Congress working president Subrata Mukherjee.
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The Trinamool candidate won Tamluk - which includes the troubled zone of Nandigram - as well as Hooghly - which includes Singur. Both areas had seen violent protests over the LF government's bid to set up industrial units by acquiring farmland, and are said to be the prime reason for the LF's defeat.
All the three glamorous candidates of the Trinamool - singer Kabir Suman (Jadavpur), and film actors Tapas Pal (Krishnanagar) and Shatabdi Roy (Birbhum) - won from seats held by the LF earlier.
Opposition front sweeps polls in Kerala (Third Lead) Text
Thiruvananthapuram, May 16 (IANS) The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) swept the polls winning 16 of 20 seats in Kerala as the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) faced one of its worst electoral drubbings in the state.
The UDF romped home with 47.86 percent votes up from 36 percent in 2004. The Bharatiya Janata Party's vote share fell from 11 percent in 2004 to 6.45 percent this time.
In 2004, CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) had bagged 19 seats capturing 50 percent of the votes polled. But this time its vote share fell to 42 percent.
The biggest surprise for the Congress was its victory in the CPI-M strongholds of Kannur and Vadakara.
The other seats which went the UDF's way were Kollam, Idukki, Malappuram, Wayanad, Trissur, Chalakudy, Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Ponnani, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Mavelikara, Pathanamthitta and Kozhikode.
Former UN undersecretary general and Congress party's Shashi Tharoor won the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat by over 80,000 votes, making his debut in Indian politics.
The LDF won Palakkad, Kasargode, Attingal and Alathur. All the winners were of the CPI-M. The biggest loser was for the Communist Party of India (CPI) which lost all the four seats that it contested. Also ending on the losing side was Francis George of the Kerala Congress (Joseph), an ally of the LDF, from Idukki.
Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, who will complete three years in office Tuesday, remained non-committal when asked who or what was responsible for the poll debacle.
"The party politburo is meeting on 18th. The central committee, the state secretariat and the state committee will all meet to discuss this defeat," Achuthanandan told reporters at his residence here Saturday.
"I will let you all know after the various party meetings are over."
"We expected a better performance and now we will have to examine why this happened. But this verdict has got nothing to do with the governance of the Left government. We will learn from the failures and work hard to strengthen the LDF," said Achuthanandan.
The Congress dubbed the poll debacle of the ruling party as a "birthday gift" by the people.
"They are going to celebrate the third anniversary of the government Monday and the voters here have given them the best gift for poor governance and anti-people policies," a beaming Ramesh Chennithala, the Congress' state unit chief, told reporters at the party headquarters here.
Leader of the opposition in the state assembly Oommen Chandy said: "This victory is because of the hard work of the entire UDF who managed to get the message of the need for a secular government at the centre. We are not asking the Left to resign. But the best they can do is to correct the wrong policies and they have two more years left to do so."
Communist Party of India, one of the CPI-M allies, was worst hit as it lost in all the four seats it contested.
Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader M.P. Veerendra Kumar, whose party was virtually booted out of the LDF by the CPI-M as he refused to give up Kozhikode seat, said: "This is the best (reply) that could be given to the arrogance of (CPI-M state secretary) Pinarayi Vijayan. This happened because of his arrogance."
But for the LDF, the third anniversary of the Achuthanandan government Tuesday will be more of a day of introspection rather than celebration.
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