In West Bengal, for instance, there is expected to be a difference of a mere one per cent in the vote share of the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition Left-Congress combine – 40 per cent against 39, the latter being made up of the Left’s 31 per cent and the Congress’s eight.

What this projection means is that almost nothing has changed in terms of percentages between the last assembly election in 2011 and the present. Five years ago, Trinamool’s vote share was 39.8 per cent, the Congress’s 8.9 per cent and the Left’s 30 per cent. The difference between then and now is that earlier, Trinamool and the Congress were allies.

Now that they are adversaries, their number of seats will come into the equation. Trinamool’s, for instance, is expected to come down from 184 to 170. But the combined seats of the Left and the Congress are anticipated to be 127, comprising the Left’s 106 and the Congress’s 21.

It is in this context that the losers will have something to be cheer about, for a difference of 40-odd seats between Trinamool and its opponents will underline a sizeable erosion in Mamata Banerjee’s popularity.

But that is not the only point. What is of no less importance is that the comrades will get their voice back. In 2008, when the communists broke off with the Congress at the centre due to differences on the Indo-American nuclear deal, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen had said that the Left had “lost its voice” because of the decline in its influence after the rupture.

The decline was evident in the 2009 general election when the CPI(M)’s tally of seats fell from 43 in 2004 to 16 and the CPI”s from 10 to four. The downhill journey continued in 2014 when the Marxists won nine seats and the CPI one.

Much of the blame for the virtual debacle was attributed to the then CPI (M) general secretary, Prakash Karat, whose hardline policies – evident in the ouster of the widely admired Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee from the party – and an abortive attempt to cobble together a rickety third front headed by Mayawati were held responsible for the Left’s decline and fall.

Karat has now been replaced as the general secretary by the moderate Sitaram Yechury, who has restored the earlier tactical ties with the Congress.

But since the taste of the pudding is in the eating, it is the partial revival of the Left’s political fortune in West Bengal which may indicate that there is still some hope for the party. The expectations will be further bolstered by the Left’s almost certain success in Kerala.

What will be obvious from such outcomes, however, is that Left hasn’t found its way back into reckoning on its own steam but because of the failure of its opponents. In West Bengal, the disillusionment with Mamata Banerjee, especially in the urban areas, is likely to play its part in breathing life into the Left-Congress alliance.

At the same time, the voters will remember that the factor which undermined Mamata Banerjee – rowdiness of the Trinamool cadres – is the same which had spelt doom for the CPI(M) in 2011 when CPI(M) politbureau member Brinda Karat had advocated the application of the so-called “Dum Dum dawai (medicine)” – an euphemism for lawlessness – against the Left’s adversaries.

The chief minister of the time, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, too, had favoured the adoption of violent tit-for-tat methods in the Singur and Nandigram areas against the supporters of the Trinamool Congress and its allies, the Maoists and the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI). Unless the Left forsakes such tactics, its gains will be temporary.

It will be no different in Kerala where the Left’s success will be seen to be in keeping with the established pattern of the voters choosing the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) in alternate years.

By that token, it is the LDF’s turn this year. However, it is also undeniable that the Congress shot itself in the foot as a result of the scams in which its big guns became involved, leading to K.M. Mani’s resignation as the finance minister and the filing of an FIR by a vigilance court against chief minister Oommen Chandy in the solar panel scam, which was stayed by the high court.

If the communists believe that their worst days are over, the same cannot be said of their present partner, the Congress. Any success that the party may achieve in West Bengal will be ascribed to its tie-up with the Left just as it rode on the backs of the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar to raise its tally of seats from four to 27.

But, as in Bihar last year and in Tamil Nadu this summer where its ally is the DMK, the 131-year-old Congress will remain very much a junior partner in West Bengal as well. (IPA Service)