In People’s Democracy’s first edition after the election results, General Secretary Prakash Karat admits that the CPM’s efforts to project a national non-Congress, non-BJP alternative on the basis of alliances in four states backfired as the combination was neither credible nor viable.

“The CPM and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.

“The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the ‘third front’ at the national level. It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level,” he says.

Despite the failure, he argues that the secular non-Congress combination got 21 per cent of the vote and it shows the potential for building up a third alternative “which is not merely an electoral alliance but a coming  together of the parties and forces on a common  platform through movements and struggles for alternative policies distinct from that of the Congress and the BJP.”

In the article, titled “The elections and after”, Karat argues that while there has been a pro-Congress trend in some parts of the country, taken overall, there is no big swing. “Congress has got just about 2 per cent more [voteshare] than in 2004,” he says. “That there was no wave or a strong all-India shift in favour of the Congress can be seen by the party losing ground in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka to mention a few,” he says.

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