With the Election Commission conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, the CPI (M), which failed to win a single seat in the last Assembly elections, is keen on using the exercise to rejuvenate the party ahead of next year’s state polls.
Besides helping people to fill up their SIR enumeration forms and deputing a significant number of Booth Level Agents (BLAs), the party on Tuesday announced to hold a 1,000-km ‘Bangla Bachao Yatra’ (Save Bengal March) from November 29.
The 19-day yatra, which will be led by senior party leaders, including Md Salim, Sujan Chakraborty, will begin from Tufanganj in Cooch Behar district in north Bengal and criss-cross 11 districts before concluding at Kamarhati in North 24 Parganas on December 17.
Multiple smaller yatras from neighbouring districts will converge with the main yatra, in which young leaders of the party, like Minakshi Mukherjee, will also be taking part.
The yatra will cover Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, Hooghly, Howrah, and North 24 Parganas.
“This statewide march will highlight the pressing issues faced by the people of West Bengal and reaffirm the party’s commitment to democratic values, social justice, and people’s rights,” CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim said.
The CPI(M) said the route has been designed to “connect with every segment that has suffered due to TMC’s misgovernance”.
Replying to a query if other Left parties and ally Congress would participate in the yatra, Salim said, “This is basically our party’s yatra”.
“The yatra will witness wide participation of citizens and activists across districts, with major public meetings and interactions along the route. Other party leaders may join from different districts. It will be finalised later,” he added.
According to CPI(M) sources, issues related to people will also be raised during this yatra. “The issues include saving voting rights, saving democracy, saving schools and health centres, saving people from micro finance loans, saving beedi workers, saving MGNREGA and migrant workers, saving rights of gig workers, and saving women of West Bengal, amongst other things,” said a senior leader.
“From education to employment, from healthcare to women’s safety, every pillar has been hollowed out. This yatra is our pledge to restore dignity, rights, and democracy, and to resist anti-people policies in Delhi and anti-people governance in Kolkata,” Salim said, targeting both the TMC and BJP.
According to a CPI(M) state committee member, the yatra will cover the 11 districts where the party has good organisation and booth-level workers. “We are focusing on the upcoming Assembly elections. We are only concentrating on those areas where we can win. It is high time to remove the ‘zero tag’ label,” the CPI(M) leader said, referring to the party’s failure to win a single Assembly seat and Lok Sabha seat in the state in the past few years.
At the same time, the party is focusing on reconnecting with people through SIR camps.
According to the Election Commission, the CPI(M) has deputed 35,748 BLAs, the third-highest after the ruling Trinamool Congress (54,310) and the principal opposition BJP (48,653).
“Apart from deploying BLAs, we are also organising camps every day, and our cadres are helping people to fill up the forms. In areas where we don’t have a strong organisation or oppression of the ruling TMC is a major concern, we are sending WhatsApp messages to help people fill up the forms. We are also sharing information that is necessary for SIR,” a CPI(M) leader said.
“We are not spreading panic like TMC or BJP. We have our issues with the SIR, but when it comes to the people, we are helping them. We are also trying to make conversation with people, which we think will help us in our primary preparations for the Assembly elections,” the party leader added.
Once the unchallenged force in West Bengal, ruling the state uninterruptedly from 1977 to 2011, the Left has been pushed to the margins over the past decade.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI (M) bagged two seats in West Bengal, while in the 2016 Assembly election, its tally stood at 26. But in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the 2021 Assembly polls, the party failed to open its account.
The decline in vote share has been dramatic. The CPI(M)-led Left Front secured 39 per cent of the vote in 2011, with the CPI(M) alone accounting for 30 per cent. A decade later, in the 2021 Assembly elections, the Left Front’s tally fell to 4.73 per cent.