JOIN USCPI leader C K Chandrappan also said “ it’s Karat’s sectarian political line that cost them dear”. The leadership failure, though, seem to be just one of the reasons for the Left’s failure.
Nandigram-Singur land-acquisition fiasco in Bengal, infighting in Kerala, opposition to the nuclear deal, failure to take credit for policies like NREGA are being seen as some of the factors for the Left’s debacle in the elections in the party circles.
The leaders were however reluctant to discuss Karat’s opposition to Manmohan Singh which is seen as an ego-battle. But they pointed at the larger trend — the Congress wave — as the electorate’s preference for a stable government.
The Left is seen as the party responsible for giving people the land in Bengal. The class of people who benefited from land reforms supported the Left. But because of the controversies generated by the land acquisition, the Left is now being seen as the usurper though it was only trying to industrialise which would have helped the next generation. But acquisition went out of hands, explained a senior Left leader.
The Left leaders are also upset that they could not take credit for welfare schemes like NREGA. The schemes like NREGA were only implemented because of the sustained pressure from the Left but the Congress ended up taking credit for that, they noted.
The Left had withdrawn its support to the UPA government in July 2008 over the India-US nuclear deal. The dogged opposition to the deal did not find any resonance with the electorate. “We contributed a lot to the UPA government's pro-people programmes like NREGA. But we withdrew our support to the UPA government for adopting imperialist policies, a subject that the people are not much concerned about,” Chandrappan, who is the deputy leader of CPI in the outgoing Lok Sabha, told reporters.
He also said that the Left must make an overall review of its policies. It is the tragedy of a sectarian political line, he said in a first open criticism of Karat’s anti-Congress stand.
The Left’s stand against the Congress also paved way to their alliance in West Bengal with Trinamool Congress, which also proved quite successful.
In Kerala, another traditional Left stronghold, it is the infighting that led to party's rout admitted a Left leader, though Karat earlier in the day had denied any such reasons.