Polls 2011: Left in bare bottoms

Ousting Left after 34 years by Mamata Banerjee could only be likened to a feat by Morarji Desai headed Janata Party which crushed Congress after Emergency in 1977, and Mamata’s no lesser feat though she is with a little less experienced team and heads a one-man army.

From 1998 to 20011: in 13 long years, like Pranab Mukherjee admitted on Friday, she not only ousted a cardre-based, highly centralised CPI(M)-led Left but just reduced them to two-digit figure. It’s no lesser feat when compared to Desai-led Janata Party victory.

And Bengal’s first woman chief minister in waiting, she by her sheer grit and sustained anti-CPI(M) campaign proved unstoppable for a Stalinist party-like CPI(M). And at the end CPI(M) fiascos - loose talks by party leader Gautam Deb not only misled chief minister and party but helped Mamata to no insignificant level.

It came clear as the day rolled by the Left began to crumble to dust, with trends confirming the defeat, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tendered his resignation to MK Narayanan, Bengal governor, and a little unflattered Mamata Banerjee emerged from her home in South Kolkata to greet the party men and media persons to tell them that she would rather dedicate this victory to “great men of Bengal and the people who loved her. For it was another freedom movement,” a slogan she made famous when she was with BJP-led NDA.