Kerala Assembly Elections 2026: CPI(M) fighting existential battle in its last bastion

Vijayan is leading the Left into crucial election amid internal dissent and anti-incumbency.

New Delhi: The CPI(M) is in an existential battle in this edition of Assembly polls as a defeat in Kerala would mean that the Left is no more in power in any part of the country that once boasted of having the second democratically elected communist government in the world in 1957.

The CPI(M) and the Left Front are not a force anymore in West Bengal and Tripura after defeats in 2016 and 2018, respectively, while it has been ruling Kerala for the past ten years, bucking a trend where the Left and the Congress-led United Democratic Front formed governments every five years.

The face for the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) is Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The 82-year-old had created a record in 2021 when he became the first CM to return to power in Kerala after a full five-year term.

After ten years, Vijayan still lords over the LDF in Kerala, as he did in CPI(M) after he assumed the post of state Secretary in 1998. Critics accuse Vijayan of transforming the party into a private limited company where dissent has no space.

However, there is trouble within the party, especially in Kannur district, considered a Left bastion, which is also Vijayan’s home turf. Three senior leaders — a former Minister from south Kerala, and two district leaders from Kannur — have risen in revolt, which was unthinkable a couple of years ago.

While the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic along with social sector initiatives catapulted the Left to power in 2021, the going appears to be tough this time for the government that has lost its sheen after it faced a barrage of corruption allegations, including the Sabarimala gold case.

A section in the party and the larger Left ecosystem argues that a third term could be detrimental to the CPI(M), citing the West Bengal experience, where it ruled for 34 years but has been decimated after its loss in 2011. Kerala is where a communist government was democratically elected for the second time in the world after the Republic of San Marino in 1945.

In West Bengal, which also goes to polls along with Kerala, the CPI(M) has been battling for life after scoring a zero in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 2021 Assembly polls. This time, the Left Front has no electoral understanding with the Congress, as was the case in the 2016 and 2021 Assembly polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Left Front together had 48.41% in 2006, but in 2021, it collapsed to 5.76%. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, CPM polled 5.73% while the Left Front got 6.1% votes.

In the past few elections, the CPM fielded several young candidates like Dipsita Dhar and Meenakshi Mukherjee, but organisational weakness marred their prospects. Some of the promising youth leaders, like Ritabrata Banerjee, Prasenjit Bose and Pratik Ur Rahman, left the party in the past decade even as it continued to attract a section of the youth.

The trouble for the Left and the CPI(M) in Bengal is that while there is resonance to their rhetoric in public, it fails to convert the anger and anti-incumbency against the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress into votes.