The State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is targeting a repeat of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when it had won 18 out of the 20 seats in the State.
In 2004, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) had blanked the Congress and left only two seats for the United Democratic Front (UDF), both the seats going to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). The CPI(M) is targeting a similar performance, knowing full well that the party or its Left allies would have a tough time winning seats elsewhere, particularly in Bengal.
A detailed plan of action has been worked out by the CPI(M) State leadership to achieve this target and is already under implementation across the State. As part of this, the party had conducted Assembly-level workshops for local leaders to identify issues specific to each Assembly segment and each local body area so that solutions could be found for such issues without loss of time. The effort is to have an outreach that enables the party to touch the lives of every segment of the population. The southern regional workshop for the party’s district-level leaders was held here on Saturday and addressed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Development advantage
The party’s assessment of the situation is that Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has been successful in showing results on the development front in its second year itself, something that has never happened with LDF governments in the past. The instruction to the leaders and cadres at the grass roots to take maximum advantage of the various infrastructure and social sector development initiatives launched by the government by making people aware of them and plugging loopholes, if any.
The party has also done a detailed analysis of the poll outcomes in each of the Lok Sabha elections so far and the party’s and the LDF’s performance in the last Assembly election and reached the conclusion that the eight seats that the LDF had won in the last Lok Sabha election could not be used as a guidance for the coming hustings. A few of the seats had come as windfall. What the party wants this time is to ensure that each seat is contested with a clear idea about the alliance’s inherent strengths and weaknesses.