Red bastions secured, Left seeks bigger role

The Left Front emerged stronger in national politics today after it registered stunning victories in the elections to the West Bengal and Kerala Assemblies.

While CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat asserted that the party "looks forward to increased interventions by the Left at the Centre", a statement issued by the CPI (M) Central Committee said, "The election results have strengthened the role of the Left in national politics."

The Left parties have locked horns with the government over several key issues like airport modernisation, labour reforms, pension reforms, raising the foreign direct investment cap for insurance and retailing, and increasing oil prices in step with rising global crude oil prices.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ruefully observed that the Assembly elections were a victory for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), even though his own party was trounced in Kerala and West Bengal.

There were differing interpretations in the Left parties on what the victory meant for the future of economic reform. The West Bengal result showed that Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's pro-reforms agenda had found endorsement, a group in the CPI (M) argued, indicating that on several issues, including pension reforms, the Left would now be more flexible at the Centre.

But Karat's statement struck an ominous note and many in the Congress said the future of reforms at the Centre was now uncertain. They added that the Congress government at the Centre had been radicalised by the West Bengal election and would be under Left pressure.

The future flash points between the Congress and the Left are likely to occur immediately. The Centre was waiting for the elections in West Bengal to conclude before overhauling the country's labour laws.

The Left wants the government to go ahead immediately on quotas in private sector jobs, while several ministers in the United Progressive Alliance, including Kapil Sibal, want the government to go slow on it.

The biggest clashes are likely to occur on an issue on which governments have been bipartisan all along "" foreign policy.

On Iran, the US and even neighbouring Nepal, there are sharp differences between the Centre's approach and the Left's. These are likely to come to the fore very soon.

In Tamil Nadu, although the Congress notched up more than 29 seats, its most respectable performance in the state in 25 years, the debate was whether it would have greater leverage vis-à-vis its partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, if it stayed out of the state government or if it joined it.

Efforts were on till late in the evening to hammer out an alliance in Assam to enable the Congress to form a government in the state that had returned the party as the single-largest but not the majority party in the House.

The resonance of the results of the Assembly elections were felt almost immediately at the Centre.

In a letter to Sonia Gandhi signed by 25 tribal and scheduled caste MPs, former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi pleaded with Gandhi to take over as prime minister as that was the mandate of the Rae Bareli election that she won by a record margin of 400,000 votes. Gandhi said publicly that this demand was uncalled for.

AICC Spokesman Rajeev Shukla categorically stated that it was "a move by an individual and has no backing either from the AICC or the party high command". Jogi's detractors perceived the move as self-aggrandisement.