Conceived to work magic in the polls, the Left-Congress alliance has come a cropper in West Bengal. And, leaving the two to lick their wounds, Mamata Banerjee will once again waltz back to ‘Nabanna’, the seat of administration in the state, with a thumping majority tied to the hem of her ‘saree’.
Besieged by issues of corruption in the pre-poll stage, the TMC’s job was thought to have grown doubly difficult when the Left and Congress chose to ally – or did it? The Left-Congress alliance’s dismal poll performance, however, tells a different story – the people rejected the alliance.
While the Left-Congress alliance did relatively better in the 76 seats of the seven North Bengal districts and Murshidabad, which are traditionally pro-Left or pro-Congress, the alliance put up a poor show in the South Bengal districts, which practically took them off the race.