Once a stronghold for West Bengal Communists, their presence in Parliament has been dwindling over time. With Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya set to retire by April this year, West Bengal will soon have no CPI-M representation in the Parliament. Currently, there are no Left Front members from the state in either the Lok Sabha or the West Bengal Assembly.
From April onwards, West Bengal will lack a CPI-M Member of Parliament, as the sole representative is retiring. Despite this, Kerala will still have three CPI-M leaders in the Upper House of Parliament and four in the Lok Sabha. In the Lower House, there is one CPI-M member each from Kerala and Rajasthan, and two from Tamil Nadu.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which once led the Left alliance and was a significant political force, now faces a reduced presence in national politics. Historically, between the 1950s and 1980s, the CPI and later the CPI-M had a stable representation in the Rajya Sabha, with a combined strength of 15-25 members.
During the 1990s and 2000s, the CPI-M’s influence peaked, with around 25 to 30 seats in the Rajya Sabha, reflecting strongholds in West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura. However, starting from the 2010s, a decline began as the Left lost ground in state Assemblies, leading to single-digit representation by the mid-2020s.
In past Lok Sabha elections, the Left parties achieved significant success, winning over 50 seats in 1971, with the CPI-M alone securing nearly half of these victories. The alliance replicated this success in 1980 and 1989, reaching a peak of over 60 seats in 1996 and 2004. However, in the 2024 Parliamentary elections, the CPI-M won four seats, the CPI secured two, and other alliance partners failed to win any seats.
Bhattacharyya, the current CPI-M member in the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal, will retire soon. Elected in April 2020, he has been the party’s Parliamentary Party leader in the Rajya Sabha since July 2024. Apart from Bhattacharyya, four Trinamool Congress MPs are also retiring from the Rajya Sabha this year.
