While accepting their poor performance in Kerala, the only state they are in power now, the Left parties of India – led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – minced no words in ridiculing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s loss of simple majority in the Lok Sabha elections. In the last two elections, the BJP had won a majority on their own, before forming a coalition government, but this time they will be at the mercy of their allies. A fact that the Left leaders, including CPI(M)’s national general secretary Sitaram Yechury stressed on, while deducing the election results as a significant step in defence of India’s democracy, secularism and civil liberties of people.
“There has been a one party dominance, a one party dictatorial rule in the last 10 years, with atrocities committed against religious minorities, particularly Muslims, and assaults on the Constitution of India and its secular democratic republican character. Now there is scope for resistance and it can be ensured that this sort of trampling of democratic rights and civil liberties can be stopped, or intensively reduced with a strong opposition, which the INDIA bloc parties have shown,” Yechury said.
The INDIA bloc was formed a year ago, with a number of opposition parties including the Congress, DMK, SP and the Left, determined to push the BJP out of power. Together, they have won 232 seats in the 545-strong Lok Sabha. “This will be a parliament where there will be stronger resistance to the highhandedness shown by the Modi government earlier. Another aspect of the election is that the results have demolished the myth of the exit polls (which had predicted significantly higher numbers for the BJP), which are clearly designed for making money in the stock market,” Yechury said.
Nationally, the Left parties have managed to increase their seats from five in 2019 to eight this year in the Lok Sabha. The CPI(M) has won four seats with only one of them coming from Kerala, while the CPI and the CPI(ML) have won two seats each. However, the BJP managed to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala for the first time this year with the victory of actor-politician Suresh Gopi in Thrissur. The rest of the 18 seats in Kerala went to the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
“The Left Democratic Front (LDF) did not have the anticipated victory in Kerala; it is a result similar to that of the 2019 elections. We will accept the verdict of the people and introspect to improve the functioning of the state government,” Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan said about the results of Tuesday. He spoke about the need to critically evaluate the BJP’s opening of account in Kerala, a land that has been a “model of democracy and secularism.”
Both Yechury and Pinarayi spoke of the tools that the BJP had used – including the backing of a large part of the media, the national agencies targeting opposition, and the money power – to stifle their rivals, but still failing to secure enough numbers. It showed that the people have rejected them and shattered their illusion that they could go on dividing people on communal lines, the Left leaders said.
MV Govindan, the CPI(M) general secretary in Kerala, said that while it was true that the Left’s vote share had come down from 36% in 2019 to 35% this year, it was the UDF that had a bigger loss, for they suffered a five percent fall. “From 47% it has come down to 42%,” Govindan pointed out.
The Congress vote share had significantly come down in the Thrissur constituency, the seat that the BJP managed to win with a majority of over 74,000 votes. The Left had fielded its CPI candidate VS Sunil Kumar, who managed to increase the vote share from 2019, while coming in second place. Congress’ K Muraleedharan however fell to third place, losing the seat the UDF had comfortably won in the last election.
Binoy Viswam, the CPI general secretary, said that the numbers spoke for themselves. “We will accept the loss of the Left. But you should look at the vote share in Thrissur. We are not saying this happily, when we point out how the UDF votes have reduced. We see Congress as a secular party. But we should study how in a place as enlightened as Kerala, such communal fascist forces who are opposed to democratic and constitutional values and people’s rights, have managed to open their account,” he said.
