New Delhi, Sep 26 (NationPress) Once a powerful entity in Bihar, uniting landless laborers, small farmers, and marginalized communities, the Left parties have witnessed a significant decline in their influence over recent decades.

They breathed a sigh of relief in the 2020 Assembly elections when, in alliance with the Opposition platform of Mahagathbandhan (MGB) or Grand Alliance, the Left secured 16 out of the 29 seats allocated to them.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation, Dipankar Bhattacharya, became the prominent figure in this resurgence, capturing 12 of the 19 constituencies contested by his party.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) each won two out of the seats they were allocated, with six and four seats respectively.

A leader involved in the 2020 seat negotiations revealed that the Left initially received an offer of nine seats, which Bhattacharya adeptly increased through skillful negotiations and ground-level assessments.

This upcoming election, they aim for “approximately 40 seats” out of Bihar's total of 243 Assembly seats.

The Left argues that these additional seats could be sourced from the Congress, which performed poorly in the last elections, winning only 19 out of 70 constituencies it contested.

Left leaders assert that had they been allotted more seats, the MGB could have emerged victorious in the elections.

In the 2015 assembly election, the CPI(ML) Liberation contested 98 seats and secured three, while the CPI lost all 98 they contested, and the CPI(M) failed to win any out of 43.

In 2010, neither the CPI(ML) Liberation nor the CPI(M) were able to win any of the 104 and 30 seats they contested, respectively, while the CPI managed to capture one out of 56.

Historically, Communist parties held a significant presence in Bihar, which diminished following the Mandal Commission issue.

While politicians such as Lalu Prasad capitalized on caste dynamics to gain electoral prominence, the Left has continued to grapple with the question of “class or caste” in their policies.

Various factors contributed to the decline of the Left, but the nomination of Kanhaiya Kumar as a Left candidate from the Begusarai Lok Sabha seat in 2019 rekindled the notion of Bihar as the “Leningrad of Bihar.” However, as the real Leningrad was renamed St. Petersburg in Russia, questions arise about how this Bihar district could retain its legacy.

Kumar has since left the CPI for Congress, emphasizing that it was the MGB that revitalized a fading Left, although Bhattacharya’s influence in this revival is undeniable. The Communists once prided themselves on a robust legacy in Bihar.

Chandrashekhar Singh, elected from Teghra, an assembly segment in the Begusarai Lok Sabha constituency, won consecutively until 2010. Other leaders such as Kedarnath Singh, Suraj Narayan Singh, Shatrughan Prasad Singh, and Ram Binod Paswan later contributed to the Left movement.

The Left also experienced a decline in popularity in Bhagalpur after having dominated various assembly segments within this Lok Sabha constituency.

Ajit Sarkar represented the Purnia assembly constituency in the Bihar Assembly four times (from 1980 to 1998) and rose through the party ranks from being a student leader, whose contributions are still remembered locally. Tragically, he was assassinated in Purnia district in 1998.

Former Union minister and senior CPI leader Chaturanan Mishra served as a three-time member of the Bihar legislative assembly (1969 to 1980), was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1984 and 1990, and to the Lok Sabha in 1996 from Madhubani. He held the cabinet minister position for agriculture in the United Front government in 1996.