CPM turns red after resounding polls defeat

CRUSHING BLOW: The Congress and the Trinamul Congress have swept the panchayat polls.

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Kolkata: The West Bengal panchayat poll results are out and the CPM has lost out in Singur and Nandigram.

Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has won all zila parishad seats in Nandigram, Haldia and Singur.

The cracks in the Red fortification are showing.

For the first time in two decades, the CPM has lost the zila parishad elections in Singur and Nandigram, the two regions that witnessed protests against the state government’s land acquisition for industrial projects.

The Trinamul Congress has swept all four seats in Nandigram and all three in Singur. The opposition even managed to wrest the entire East Midnapore zila parishad from the Left Front and inflict major losses on the CPM in its fortresses of Haldia and Khejuri.

“There was so much violence but revenge couldn't be sweeter - ballots won against bullets,“ said Trinamul Congress chief, Mamata Banerjee.

For the CPM, it was a rare moment of introspection.

“Till late this morning we were sure of our win, now we realise we failed to understand peoples' hearts,” said CPI-M leader, Benoy Konar.

The CPM has also lost North Dinajpur and South 24 Parganas, which went to the Congress and Trinamul Congress respectively. The Congress believes the results have some lessons for the fractured Opposition.

"Even the opposition, they should take some lesson from this result. If we are able to fight jointly, we can get much better result,” said Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee.

In other districts, the Left domination was complete. But with Lok Sabha elections just a year away, the set-backs in Singur and Nandigram might just force the Left to do a re-think on its policy of industrialisation.

It's a historic mandate, a resounding no to both the CPM's manner of handling the issue of industrialisation and the discontent it managed to infiltrate among the affected rural folk.

With several industrial projects in pipeline, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his government would be forced to tread cautiously before implementing its policies, for the first time in three-and-a-half decades.