Losses for left in West Bengal and Kerala give strength to Congress in pursuing pro-market reforms
A fiery opposition leader has won a sweeping victory against the communists who had controlled the Indian state of West Bengal for more than three decades, in one of two major losses for the left in state elections.
Mamata Banerjee's victory came as votes were being counted in four other state elections across India. Her allies in the Congress party, which rules India in a national coalition, expressed confidence that the coalition would emerge from the polls relatively unscathed despite a string of corruption scandals and protests against food price inflation.
The communists also lost narrowly in southern Kerala, the only other state they had controlled, suggesting they may have trouble in the next general elections in 2014. The results are a vindication of the pro-market reforms of Congress and its allies, which drew vocal opposition from the communists.
Opponents have been trying to unseat the communists in West Bengal since 1977, and Banerjee's Trinamool Congress succeeded in a landslide.
Banerjee said the Bengal results reflected a 34-year "freedom struggle" and a "victory for the people". She had asked her supporters to abstain from alcohol and victory rallies to help maintain calm in the volatile state. Security was tight against possible violence by communist supporters.
"We want to dedicate our victory to our people and motherland," said Banerjee, who is expected to quit as national railways minister to be West Bengal's chief minister. "We will give good governance and good administration, not autocracy."
Trinamool and Congress had led an aggressive campaign in the mostly rural state, hammering the communist-led government for economic stagnation, corruption, agricultural malaise and industrial decline.
"West Bengal was once the pride of India. The communists have ruined it," the Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi, told 10,000 villagers packed into a recent schoolyard rally in the agricultural Murshidabad district.
West Bengal's outgoing chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, conceded defeat while thanking those who had supported the communist-led alliance over the years.
Partial results from north-eastern Assam, where Congress has been holding peace talks with secessionist militants, showed Congress and its allies to have a wide lead over a fractured opposition.
The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, congratulated Banerjee as well as Assam's incumbent chief minister, Tarun Gogoi.
Voters had "reaffirmed their faith in the Congress government" after it had reached out to the militants and helped calm the violent region, Gogoi said.
But in Tamil Nadu, Congress and regional ally Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – which ruled the southern state – appeared to be heading for a major beating. The DMK was deeply implicated in a mobile phone licensing scandal that cost the nation an estimated tens of billions of dollars and forced one of the party's leaders to resign as national telecoms minister before being charged with conspiracy and fraud.
Analysts said, however, that the defeat could end up benefiting Congress nationally by allowing it to divorce itself from its scandal-plagued partner.
Political analyst Mahesh Rangaranjan said it would now be "very difficult to say corruption doesn't matter".
Congress has also come under fire for alleged mismanagement and corruption tied to the staging of last year's Commonwealth Games and to the takeover of valuable Mumbai apartments intended for poor war widows by powerful bureaucrats and politicians' relatives.
The tiny state of Pondicherry also voted.