Two major left parties in India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, recorded significant electoral advances in the country’s Indigenous dominated region in recent state elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
The left parties won three seats (one in Maharashtra and two in Jharkhand) in total, despite hostile and adverse conditions created by the ruling Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), through the alleged misuse of institutions and money.
CPI(M)’s candidate Vinod Nikole won from Dahanu in Maharashtra. CPI(M) was contesting just three seats as a part of the alliance of progressive parties, called the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA or Grand Development Front), led by India’s largest opposition party Congress in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is India’s second largest province, and has the largest state GDP in the country.
The left’s victory was even more significant, given the fact that the MVA as a whole lost to the right wing Mahayuti (Grand Alliance), led by the BJP in the final results declared on November 23, winning merely 49 seats out of 288.
In Jharkhand, another state with a significant Indigenous population, CPI (ML) L, won two seats as a part of another progressive alliance led by the local party called Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). The JMM-led alliance defeated the BJP-led alliance in the state, which is also rich in mineral resources.
The winning left candidates from Jharkhand are Arup Chatterjee and Chandradev Mahato who contested from Nisar and Sindri constituencies respectively.
Elections for both the states were held in two phases on November 13 and November 20 amidst the widespread allegations of BJP trying to polarize voters on the religious and sectarian grounds and using its links with the big capital to buy votes.
Ashok Dhawale, CPI (M) leader from Maharashtra and the party’s polit bureau member told Peoples Dispatch that “the victory of Comrade Vinod Nikole over his BJP rival in the otherwise shocking results of the state assembly elections in Maharashtra is the victory of genuine people’s power over unprecedentedly corrupt money power. It is the victory of secular struggles over communal conspiracies. And it is the victory of loyalty to the people over betrayal of the people.”
Constant popular struggles has made Dahanu a fortress for the Left
This was Nikole’s second consecutive win in Dahanu, which is located in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. This constituency is reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (ST). In Dahanu, Nikole defeated his nearest rival from BJP by a margin of over 5,000 votes. The CPI (M) candidate from Kalvan, another constituency reserved for the STs, lost his seat with a small margin of just 7,000 votes after getting a record number of votes.
STs, Indigenous communities listed in gazettes, make around 8% of India’s total population as per the 2011 census, and mostly live in central and north-east India, including Jharkhand and Maharashtra. They are considered to be one of India’s most economically deprived communities.
Noting that “the CPI(M) has won this seat (Dahanu) now in 10 of the last 11 state assembly elections since 1978 (it was the Jawhar-ST seat before delimitation in 2009), and that, too, by giving 5 different candidates, all of whom have won,” Dhawle gives credit to constant struggles waged by the party in the region since the very beginning.
Dhawle reminds how the left under the leadership of “legendary Comrade Godavari Parulekar” has been consistently organizing farmers and Indigenous people in the region since the 1940s, building a base where the Party becomes more important than the individual candidates, and overcoming the challenges put forward by the ruling corporate-politician nexus.
“This victory of the CPI(M) will serve as a beacon of hope and confidence for the Left in the state” Dhawle says. He underlines that the victory at Dahanu once again proves that “the RSS-BJP, despite all the divisive antics and vulgar Adani money power at its command, can still be defeated, if it is combated with revolutionary ideology, constant struggle, strong organisation, and clean and upright people’s representatives.”
