By Rabindra Nath Sinha
How will the Left parties fare in the Bihar Assembly elections the first phase of which covering 121 constituencies out of the total of 243 seats takes place on Thursday, November 6 ? In the fairly exhaustive coverage already seen in the print and electronic media, the Left does not “qualify” for much space and time. But, certain ground realities indicate that in the overall narrative, those too deserve to be assessed for rational conclusions.
Those in the fray are CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, CPI and CPI (Marxist). They are part of the RJD-Congress dominated Mahagathbandhan. The two other Left parties – RSP and Forward Bloc – are contestants. Under the agreed seat sharing deal struck, the number of seats being fought is 20 by CPI(ML) Liberation, six by CPI and four by CPM. In coalitions, ‘friendly contests’ are part of politics as agreement on all seats are invariably uncommon and, therefore, in Bihar too, the ‘friendly contest’ mechanism has been availed of by CPI, which has fielded three more candidates – all of them against the Congress.
In the existing Assembly, CPI(ML) Liberation has 11 members and CPI and CPM two each, making a total of 15. CPIML) Liberation had 12 members; one of them Sudama Prasad, who represented the Tarari seat in Bhojpur district, was fielded from the Lok Sabha seat last year. Sudama Prasad won the Lok Sabha seat defeating BJP’s former cabinet minister R K Singh. But, in the bye-election for the Tarari seat, CPI(ML) Liberation’s nominee lost and, therefore, its number of Assembly members came down to 11.
The party’s vote share in 2020, when it had fought on 19 seats, was 3.16 per cent. The vote shares of CPI and CPM in 2020 were 0.83 per cent and 0.65 per cent respectively. The Left vote share was a total of 4.64 per cent.
In 2020, the ultra-left party’s performance under the leadership of its general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, saw a quantum jump; the strike rate was 63 per cent and the number of seats rose by nine from three it had won in 2015.
The party’s Bihar unit secretary Kunal told IPA: “We are reasonably optimistic that we will better our 2020 tally; some middle-aged (between 35 and 38) new faces have been field, there is one woman candidate and a number of the last battle’s winners have been re-nominated. With their hard work and clan image, they should make in mark and help the party improve its 2020 tally”, Kunal said.
CPI’s control commission member Karyanand Paswan restricted himself to saying the three additional candidates had been put up keeping in view the party’s work in those areas and the winnability aspect. Paswan expressed his optimism that the overall Left performance would show an improvement on 2020. CPM’s Bihar outfit secretary Lalan Choudhury is of the view that the Left parties’ continuous accent on hard bread and butter issues, distribution of land among the landless, growing unemployment and frustration among educated youths is being appreciated by large sections of the electorate. The seats the party is fighting on are in the districts of Samastipur, Saran, Darbhanga and Motihari.
The manifesto of CPI(ML) Liberation has sought five decimal land in rural areas and three decimal land in urban areas as well as permanent housing for every landless and homeless family. Redistribution of 21 lakh acres of land by implementing the recommendations of the Bandyopadhyay commission. A related demand is guarantee of certification and occupancy to the poor living on non-cultivable and government land. It has also demanded ban on displacement of the poor with rehabilitation.
The CPM and CPI manifestos too have emphasized the urgency of sweeping land reforms and redistribution of land. Genuine progress and a perceptible lift in the quality of life of the vast sections of the poor and downtrodden in Bihar hinge on land reforms. This task has been shied away by the rulers in Bihar for the last 20 years, Bihar watchers told IPA.
The importance of the Left tally to the Mahagathbandhan, which is likely to depend considerably on the show by CPI(ML) Liberation, will be known on November 14 [the second phase of voting is scheduled for November 11]. The anti-incumbency factor is very much there. Also, there are the Jan Suraaj Party and Owaisi-led combination. At the moment, these are not visible factors, sources told IPA. (IPA Service)
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