During the run-up to the Kerala assembly polls last year, BJP state chief K Surendran made an audacious statement. He said his party would form the government in Kerala even if it wins 35 seats, in an assembly where the simple majority is 71 of 140 seats.
Surendran was trolled, ridiculed and even accused of openly declaring the saffron party's attempt to derail the people's mandate with brazen poaching.
Winning a maximum of 35 seats should not have been even in the BJP leader's wildest dreams.
Recently, CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan made a similar statement. He said the CPM can dislodge the Narendra Modi government in the next elections, due in 2024.
For clarity, Modi's BJP alone has 301 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha while Kodiyeri's CPM has three.
This time, surprisingly the trollers kept mum.
Either the usual troll machines didn't find it even worthy of their time or the majority of Kerala doesn't want to ridicule the dream of CPM throwing Modi out of power.
For Kerala's political majority, it's a shared dream.
Balakrishnan, who was re-elected as the CPM's state secretary for the third time, was addressing the party cadre at the culmination of the party's state meet in Kochi on February 4.
This is exactly what he said: “A journalist asked me are you going to keep winning elections. I told him, we are fighting every election to win. Not only the government in Kerala, our aim is to rule the country. We will leap forward for that. We will oust the Narendra Modi government from the Centre. By the next Lok Sabha elections, the Modi government should be dislodged from power.
"A government that protects secularism, democracy and Constitution has to come. Kerala is a state which can make a crucial contribution towards that.
"During the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the country was being ruled by the Vajpayee government. At that time the BJP/NDA tried to retain power with the slogan, India Shines. But in that election, the Left front said that the BJP government should be ousted and called for the victory of secular forces. This Kerala took up that slogan and voted the Left front to victory in 18 out of the 20 seats. Those 18 MPs increased the tally of the Left parties at the Centre and dislodged the BJP from power. Last time, 19 out of 20 were given to UDF.
"Congress could not become either an alternative force or even the principal opposition party. If all the 20 seats are given to LDF this time, the BJP government will be out of power at the Centre. People have to take up this political mission now.”
Stopping the Modi juggernaut with just 20 seats? Balakrishnan should have been the first one to realise how ambitious and implausible a claim he was making. Still, he said it in public, because he was sending out his party's message that is going to be a major poll plank in the 2024 general elections. Whether Modi goes out or stays back is a different issue, the CPM has set its eyes on nothing less than 20 out of 20 in Kerala.
So the party's poll narrative is likely to be that it will have a significant role in forming a non-BJP government if the post-poll scenario warrants a broad alliance of opposition parties.
Twenty, or anything near it, will be a number with considerable bargaining power in such a scenario. Kodiyeri's reminder of 2004 and the CPM's role in the formation of the first Congress-led UPA government, hence, is a clear indicator.
However, Balakrishnan has conveniently forgotten another data.
In 2004, the CPM alone had won 43 seats across the country, making it the third-largest party in the Lok Sabha.
Its ally CPI also had 10 seats.
Those days the CPM still had some clout in West Bengal where the party won 26 of the 42 seats.
Together the Left parties had 60 MPs in the Lok Sabha.
Now, with the Left parties wiped out in their strongholds Bengal and Tripura, there is no reason to assume that they would get anywhere near 60 or any significant number.
The only state where it can hope of scoring a decent number in Kerala. The Left Front, confident and energised with the historic second term in the state, is also likely to improve its performance considerably in the next Lok Sabha polls. Balakrishnan's calculation hence is justified, but only from his party's perspective.
The party has every right to work for devising any strategy to win all the 20 seats from Kerala. However, its aspiration to play a leadership or coordinating role in stitching up an alliance of non-BJP parties – the embedded message in Balakrishnan's speech – looks an unrealistic one. The Kerala unit of the CPM, which is the most powerful section in the party, has always been against any kind of electoral understanding with the Congress.
However, it would be politically too naive to think that a non-BJP government could be formed without the Congress in the present scenario.
Even when it is at a weak point in history with only 52 seats in Lok Sabha, the party enjoys the support of nearly 20 percent votes.
Any fall in its Kerala tally, which the CPM will try to ensure, will evidently reflect in its national numbers unless the party improves its performance in other states.
The West Bengal-based Trinamool Congress is the other non-BJP party that can hope to win a significant number of seats, but the CPM national leadership is against any truck with the Mamata Banerjee-led party. Without the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, how the CPM is going to dethrone Modi could be better left to its imagination.
Even if it cobbles up or joins a non-BJP and non-Congress coalition with major regional parties like DMK, NCP and Samajwadi Party, such an alliance is unlikely to reach anywhere near the magical number needed to form the government.
In clearer words, even if the CPM wins all 20 seats from Kerala, it would help in forming a non-BJP government only if the Congress improves its tally from other states and the Left party decides to support it like it did in 2004.
Balakrishnan's party colleague and politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai told Onmanorama that the CPM has not started any discussion on an election strategy for the 2024 polls.
He said Balakrishnan might have made only a casual remark in his speech. “Our only aim is to isolate and defeat BJP. We are not bothered about the number of seats at the moment. We will try to win as many as possible. Participating in a government is not an issue at all,” he said.
Pillai remembered how the CPM refused the offer of the PM's post in 1996 when the party had won 32 seats. “We had a firm stand that we would not be able to influence the policies of the government with such a low number of seats. We still don't regret the decision to turn down the offer,” he said.
Political observer Joseph C Mathew termed Balakrishnan's claim of toppling the Modi government with maximum seats from Kerala as an unrealistic statement.
“Last time also they had run a similar campaign, but the people didn't believe them. They made a strategic mistake by convincing people that they will not align with the Congress. This made an impression among the voters that the Left parties would have nothing to do at the Centre even if they win seats,” he said.
