Chennai: The election to the 15th Tamil Nadu Assembly saw two milestones for the Communist parties. For the first time, both CPI (M) and CPI contested together without allying with Dravidian majors. None of them was elected.
Since the first general election in 1952, this is the first time that CPI and CPI (M) will have no representation in the Assembly. In the heydays of Communist movement, veteran leader P. Ramamurthy won the elections from Madurai North Assembly constituency in 1952 while being in prison. The communist parties had withstood the sympathy wave of Rajiv Gandhi assassination in 1991.
The Left parties are facing successive electoral defeat in the State. The 2014 Lok Sabha election was the fist time they contested together in any polls in the State but ended up getting a mere one per cent vote share.
Senior CPI leader C. Mahendran termed the election defeat ‘temporary’.
“We are projecting a policy-based alternative to AIADMK and DMK. It will take some time to make people understand our alternative policies.”
Mahendran insisted that Left parties would continue to project the alternative to the Dravidian parties despite the electoral debacle. “Going unrepresented in the Assembly may look like a crisis but it did not dent the confidence of the party or the cadres.”
Writer and activist A. Marx said Left parties should first accept the fact that it is declining in the country and should try to revive the trend. “Decline of Left is an international phenomenon.”
