The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front Government of West Bengal will perhaps be facing its toughest challenge, as the State goes to polls on April 18. After a series of setbacks in the hands of the Railway Minister Ms Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC), starting from the Panchayat elections in 2008, the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and finally the Municipal elections in 2010, the Left front has found itself struggling to make the turnaround that would ensure its return to power for the eighth consecutive term.

The Opposition, led by the TMC, on the other hand, riding high on the anti-incumbency factor, has never before appeared as a threat to the 35-year-old State Government as it does in this election. To make matters even more difficult for the Left, the TMC and the Congress have forged an alliance designed to obviate any chance of division of votes of the Opposition working in favour of the ruling coalition. TMC will be contesting in 227 seats, leaving the Congress only 65 seats and its old partner, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), two. The elections, which will be held in six phases, will begin April 18 and end May 10

Declining vote percentage

The last three elections of the Panchayat, Lok Sabha and Municipal bodies, have indicated a strong anti-incumbency factor gaining momentum against the Left front. The percentage of votes pulled by the Left has shown a sharp decline since the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when it secured 50.72 per cent. In the 2006 Assembly elections, it dipped slightly to 50.18 per cent and then nose-dived to 43.3 per cent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Mamata's turnaround

Ms Mamata's political fortune, on the other hand, has been on the ascendant since she launched violent anti-land acquisition agitation, first in Singur in Hooghly district, forcing the prestigious Tata Motors' Small Car project to relocate from the State, and then in Nandigram in Purbo Medinipur district, over mere rumours of land acquisition for industrial purposes. Her party also seems to have been successful in wooing away the bulk of the minority votes from the Left, and in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Left could win only 15 seats out of the 42 Parliamentary seats, while the TMC-Congress-SUCI alliance won 26.

The following year, the Left suffered yet another setback at the Municipal elections, even though that time there was no TMC-Congress alliance. In a move to combat the ant-incumbency factor often associated with old faces, the Left front has dropped more than half of its sitting MLAs including nine Ministers from its list of candidates for the 294 seats in the State Assembly.

Uneasy alliance

The TMC-Congress alliance, however, is an uneasy one. There has never been any love lost between the two parties, and the final seat-sharing arrangement was arrived at after weeks of bitter wrangling. Initially, the Pradesh Congress had demanded 98 seats, but was ultimately forced to accept the humiliating terms of the arrangement which allowed it only 65 seats. Different sections of the Congress have openly rebelled against the alliance, and expressed resentment not only against TMC, but also their own state leadership. “This is a one-sided seat-adjustment rather than an alliance. In trying to ensure the removal of the Left Front from the state, our own existence in the state is being threatened,” a disgruntled Congress leader told Business Line . In a some cases, those Congress MLAs who were forced to make way for TMC candidates, have even decided to contest the elections as independents.

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