From a shared seat tally of 16 in the 2020 Assembly elections down to just three this time, the combined Left could only muster less than one-fifth of its previous mandate in the Bihar Assembly on Friday.
While initial trends appeared to display a faint silver lining for it earlier during the day as it found itself sometimes surpassing and sometimes neck-to-neck with its larger, national ally, the Congress, in the number of seats that it was leading on, these finally settled on half of the grand old party’s total tally of six.
The combined Left, which also includes the CPI that could not open its electoral account this time, had 16 legislators in the outgoing Bihar Assembly — 11 of the CPI(M-L) and two each of the CPI and CPM.
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The Left had recorded an increase of nine seats in the 2020 Assembly polls. The CPI(M-L) represented the Balrampur, Ziradei, Darauli, Phulwari, Agiaon, Dumraon, Karakat, Arwal, Ghosi segments; while the CPM held Manjhi and Bibhutipur, and the CPI had Teghra and Bakhri.
By Friday evening, however, the CPI(M-L) could only retain Karakat and added Paliganj to its account; the CPM was only able to retain Bibhutipur.
In an interview to The Indian Express, CPI(M-L) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya termed the final verdict “a very unnatural result” and questioning how the Nitish Kumar-led government which has been in power for 20 years and the Modi government at the Centre which could not muster a majority of its own a year ago “produce such a miracle in 2025”.
“We have to see why it happened. Why just for the opposition… It is a crisis for the entire country,” Bhattacharya said.
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Stopping short of accusing the NDA of stealing the Bihar Assembly polls, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary M A Baby accused the BJP of having harnessed “all its manipulative ability” for its sweep of the state Assembly on Friday.
The former Lok Sabha MP, however, conceded that the results were enough cause for “sincere and candid introspection” both independently as well as together, flagging issues such as “friendly fights” in about a dozen seats.
“For the BJP and JDU, it was an existential election – in the last Lok Sabha polls, the BJP lost its majority and they are relying on two crutches, the JDU and TDP. If they lost Bihar, one crutch would have gone and their countdown (out of power) would have begun,” Baby said.
“… they used Special Intensive Revision to intimidate voters, besides money and muscle power; a Rs 10,000 bribe to voters after the Model Code of Conduct was in force; all these together led to their victory,” he added.
