On Counting Day, Alliance prepare for heartbreak

With just four days before the announcement of election results on May 19, leaders of the alliance have realised that coming to power in 2016 will be a distant dream.

However, to hide their real feeling they are telling the party’s rank and file that the alliance is coming to power as without this it will be difficult for them to find out agents whose presence are very important at the time of counting. Left Front chairman Biman Bose at a press conference held on Friday refused to comment on the figure which the Front was expecting.

Surya Kanta Misra who had earlier said that the alliance would get 200 seats backtracked and blamed the media for distorting his words. Adhir Chowdhury who said on Friday that Congress would get 60 seats could not explain the phenomenal rise.

The bookies have said that Trinamool Congress would come back to power but with less number of seats.

The leaders of the alliance have realised that they will not be able to make any dent in the rural base. Of 294 seats, 136 are in rural Bengal that is under panchayats. The total number of rural seats in Murshidabad, Malda and North Dinajpur will be around 36. The leaders felt that the work carried out by TMC led government had set up constituencies of beneficiaries where people are getting Rs 2 a kilo rice, cycles, stipends and where there is marked improvement in roads, drinking water and electricity. 

The alliance in the campaigns had highlighted deterioration of law and order situation but could not say much against development which was palpable. Rural people were not concerned about the fall of democracy as law and order situation in compared to CPI(M) regime was better. The alliance has realised that they have failed to attract women, Muslim and poor voters.

Also, the marginal seats where the candidates had won by less than 5,000 votes in 2011 Assembly election are a matter of concern for the alliance. There are 31 such seats out of 294 constituencies. To take an example, in Palashipara in Nadia, AM Sadi of CPI(M) had won by 1,622 votes in 2011. Nagendra Roy of Forward Bloc and Akshay Thakur were elected from Cooch Behar (North) and South seats by 2,197 and 2853 votes. In Hingalgunj, CPI(M) candidate had won the seat by 1,015 votes. In Pandua, Raipur and Mangalkote Left Front candidates had won by 1238, 182 and 126 votes respectively.

But the leaders of alliance refused to buy this logic and said that in 2011 there was Congress alliance with TMC and referred to 2014 Lok Sabha polls where TMC and Congress fought separately. But in 2014 election BJP got around 17 per cent votes. However, BJP failed to keep this percentage and lost in most of the seats in 2015 civic election.

The leaders of the alliance seems to be making wild guesses as they believe that there would be cent per cent vote transfer between Congress  and CPI(M) and BJP supporters would vote for the alliance. If they seriously mean it then their hopes are bound to be shattered on May 19.