Three months after Kerala voters delivered one of the most decisive verdicts in the state's modern political history, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is still struggling to come to terms with a collapse that few inside the party saw coming. The Left Democratic Front (LDF), led by former Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, was routed in the Kerala Assembly elections, crashing from 99 seats to just 35 in the 140-member Assembly — a loss of 64 seats that has shaken the party's foundations in its strongest state.

The Scale of the Collapse

The LDF had entered the election convinced it was on the cusp of history — a third consecutive term in office, an achievement no Kerala government had managed before. Voters, however, had other plans. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) swept back to power, reducing the Left to its worst Kerala Assembly tally in decades.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had been wiped out entirely in 2021, returned to the House with three seats — a modest but symbolically significant recovery.

Yet it was not the BJP's return that stung the CPI(M) most sharply. The deeper wound was self-inflicted.

The Kannur Paradox

Three CPI(M) stalwarts managed to hold their seats — but only because the Congress-led UDF, in an unusual display of political generosity, chose not to field candidates against them. Two of those uncontested victories came in Kannur, the political heartland most closely associated with Vijayan himself.

That the party's most prominent figures needed rival forbearance to survive was, for many inside the CPI(M), a more telling indictment than the seat count alone. The fortress, critics noted, had developed cracks in its very foundation.

A Review That May Review Vijayan

The state leadership has since engaged in the familiar post-defeat ritual: crafting narratives that explain the loss without fully accounting for it. This time, however, the exercise has not remained contained within state party rooms.

The national leadership has entered the frame. CPI(M) General Secretary M.A. Baby is among those reportedly asking pointed questions — questions that, for the first time in years, directly implicate Vijayan's leadership style and decision-making. For a party where challenging Vijayan internally was once considered almost taboo, the shift in tone is significant.

The Vijayan camp, for its part, has not retreated. Its social-media apparatus has been working at full pace, scrutinising every move of the new V.D. Satheesan-led government — from flood response to administrative lapses — to sustain a counter-narrative: that governance has deteriorated in the LDF's absence.

The Three-Day Reckoning Ahead

All of this builds toward a critical moment: an extended three-day State Committee meeting scheduled for next month, at which the electoral defeat will be subjected to formal review. The central question is no longer whether the result will be examined — that much is settled. The live question is whether the review will have the institutional courage to examine Vijayan's role in it.

For a leader once regarded as politically untouchable within the party, the prospect of being the subject — rather than the convenor — of such a review marks a remarkable shift. How the CPI(M) handles that question will determine not just the party's immediate direction in Kerala, but the credibility of its internal democracy going forward.