INDIA’S ruling Congress party won an election boost on Friday (May 13) in local polls that ended decades of communist rule in a key state and lifted the fortunes of under-fire Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.
In the largest of the five states involved, West Bengal, Congress’ local ally won a landslide to sweep aside the world’s longest-serving democratically elected communist government, which has been in power for 34 years.
The Trinamool Congress, led by populist Mamata Banerjee, and Congress looked set to win more than two thirds of the 294 seats, condemning the ruling Left Front to the wilderness in an historic win that sparked street celebrations.
Banerjee, the 56-year-old national railways minister known affectionately as “didi”, or elder sister, said her success was “a victory of the people against years of oppression”.
Results elsewhere handed Congress victory in northeast Assam and the state of Kerala, where the ruling communists were also defeated in a blow that points to the steady decline of India’s historically strong leftists.
Congress lost the tiny and politically insignificant southeast territory of Pondicherry and it suffered a major reversal in a fifth state, Tamil Nadu, where its ally suffered a rout.
The state polls were seen as a mini-referendum on the popularity of 78-year-old Dr Singh and his government, which has been paralysed by corruption scandals and under fire over high inflation for much of the past year.
“Congress’s performance is very good. They are overall in a comfortable position,” Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst at the Centre for the Developing Societies think-tank in New Delhi, told reporters.
He said there had been “anxiety” in the party ahead of the results, adding that a good performance would “bring back the much-needed confidence at the federal level. People’s support will give them an image makeover.”
The victory for Banerjee’s Trinamool in West Bengal, home to the once-grand but now crumbling city of Kolkata, marks the end of an era in modern Indian politics.
The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had until recently won every election in the state since 1977, but they stand accused of huge economic mismanagement and political violence.
Cheering crowds gathered outside Banerjee’s modest one-storey home in Kolkata, where she spoke to a jubilant crowd that burst fire-crackers and threw green powder-paint in a riot of colour and celebration.
“I want to continue my life like a commoner, like a simple man. If the people are happy, I am happy,” said Banerjee, whose father was a rural teacher.
The anti-incumbency mood in West Bengal is said by analysts to have been fuelled by farmers angry at being forced to sell fertile land holdings under a government job-creation drive to lure industry.
Banerjee, a populist who critics say is unpredictable and a policy lightweight, has pledged to halt the decline of West Bengal by both reviving industry and helping farmers.
The day was a victory for women, with the AIADMK party of former movie starlet J Jayalalithaa in the state of Tamil Nadu handing a resounding defeat to the ruling DMK, which is a Congress ally.
The DMK has been embroiled in one of India’s biggest ever corruption scandals in which former federal telecom minister A. Raja is accused of selling off telecom licences at cut-price costs.
India will now have four women in the powerful position of state chief ministers, including Jayalalithaa, Banerjee, the mercurial Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh state and Sheila Dikshit in New Delhi.
