Tripura polls: ‘CPI(M) win reflects re-emergence of Left Parties’

The return of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in Tripura and Forward Bloc wresting the Nalhati seat from Congress in West Bengal reflects “re-emergence” of the Left parties, senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said on Thursday.

“We congratulate the people of Tripura to have given us two-thirds majority for the seventh Left Front government in the state and sixth in a row,” he told reporters when his reaction was sought on the poll results.

Asked about Left Front partner Forward Bloc winning the Nalhati seat, earlier represented by President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee, Yechury said, “It reflects the re-emergence of the Left.”

To a question on Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s election campaign speech that the Left should be thrown out of the country, the CPI(M) leader said: “Please take the people more seriouslyā€¯.

“… More they say such things, more the people react. When Rajiv Gandhi described Kolkata as a ‘dying city’, we won three subsequent elections in West Bengal. Another Congress leader, who is now more now, also wanted to throw out the Left in the Bay of Bengal, but we kept winning.”

—PTI