Stating that people in West Bengal were still charmed with the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), Left Front chairperson Biman Basu refused to comment why the Communist Party of India (Marxist) faced such a bitter defeat in the by-polls in West Bengal. By-polls were held in Chowringhee constituency in south-central Kolkata and Basirhat Dakshin constituency in North 24 Parganas district on September 13, the results of which were declared on Tuesday.
“Our presence was anyway weak in Chowringhee. However, we will have to conduct a study to look into the reasons why we lost out in Basirhat Dakshin,” Mr. Basu said. CPI-M ended up bagging fourth spot among top four parties. The party candidate Faiayaz Ahmed Khan got 8890 votes, about seven thousand votes more than NOTA, and had to sacrifice his deposit. In the last Assembly election in 2011, the seat was left to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the party did not fare too badly. RJD got more than 20,000 votes. In Basirhat Dakshin (South), a CPI-M stronghold even during last election, the party finished third, just above Congress. "We need to study the result before drawing a conclusion," Mr Basu.
Blaming the AITC for bringing in the into Bengal, Mr. Basu said the BJP established its presence in the State when it won the Ashoknagar Assembly segment in the 1999 by-polls with a BJP-AITC alliance. Claiming that people were yet to see the ‘good days’ that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised during his campaign in May, he said the BJP was following the same economic policies as introduced by the former Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.
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“Both the BJP and the Congress are in favour of foreign direct investment. If the BJP follows the same policies of the Congress, how will they guarantee good days to the people?” Mr. Basu questioned.