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All 294 seats in theWest Bengal Legislative Assembly 148 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 82.94% ( 6.14pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Alliance wise Result | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Legislative Assembly elections were held in theIndian state ofWest Bengal in 1996. The election took place simultaneously with the1996 Indian general election.[1][2] This was the last electionJyoti Basu contested, as he retired from politics in 2000.
TheCommunist Party of India (Marxist) had fielded 70 new candidates, but many of them failed to get elected.[3] TheAll India Forward Bloc had suffered a split before the election, with the emergence of theForward Bloc (Socialist).[3]
The Left Front supportedJanata Dal candidates in five constituencies.
Factionalism was rife within the state Congress unit. After being out of power in the state for about 20 years with no significant increase in either vote-share or number of seats in the last 15 years, most state Congress leaders had given up the hopes of defeating the Left Front & sought to re-evaluate their strategy. The elections took place alongside the general elections, in which there were 4 major players - theBharatiya Janata Party-led Hindu right wing alliance, the centre-leftalliance led byJanata Dal made up of Congress dissidents, the centrist alliance of the Congress party & the leftist alliance of Communist parties, out of which the BJP & JD didn't have much influence in the state. In 1991, the Congress underP. V. Narasimha Rao was able to form a minority government with the support of the Janata Dal, however Rao's tenure saw the Congress rife with defection of some of its senior leaders & charges of corruption. The political climate of India was charged with the issue ofRam-mandir, following thedemolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. The BJP made the construction ofRam-mandir on theRam Janmabhoomi site its primary electoral promise while the Janata Dal banked on the implementation of theMandal Commission report as its main electoral plank in order to counter the BJP, leading to conflict betweenOBC &SC groups. However, theMandir-Mandal issue didn't have much impact in the politics of the state which had been under Communist rule since 1977. As the Janata Dal was open to supporting both BJP & Congress, the support of the Left Front became the more important on the national stage. CPI(M) stalwart & the incumbent Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had been even offered the post of Prime Minister by the Congress when the Janata Dal government ofV. P. Singh collapsed in 1990 due to BJP's withdrawal of support & again when the Congress withdrew its support fromChandra Shekhar's government in 1991.
In midst of such political instability, 2 factions developed within the state Congress unit. One faction led byPranab Mukherjee was in favour of forging an electoral understanding with the Left Front in the state in order to gain their support on the national level. The other faction led by anti-Communist leaders likeSiddharta Shankar Ray &Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi was stauchly opposed to it. The rivalry between these 2 groups played out in open during the 1992 elections to the post of state PCC president. The pro-Communist faction sided with Mukherjee's protégé, 4-timeSealdah MLASomen Mitra, while the anti-Communist faction sided with Ray's protégé, state Youth Congress president &South Kolkata MPMamata Banerjee.[4] Mukherjee played a decisive role in ensuring Mitra's victory in this election by having Banerjee's main supporter Ray sent out of the state asIndia's ambassador to the US at that time. Somen Mitra's and Mamata Banerjee's factions continued to fight over the choice of candidates to be fielded.[5] Banerjee played an important role in rallying public support for the party & fielding many new faces from the Youth Congress as the party's candidate.[5][6]
The Congress leaderAdhir Ranjan Chowdhury contested theNabagram seat from jail, being imprisoned on murder charges.[7] His speeches were recorded from prison and played at campaign meetings.[7]
The Indian National Congress and theJharkhand Mukti Morcha had entered into alliance.[8]
| Party | Flag | Symbol | Leader | Contesting Seats | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communist Party of India (Marxist) |  |  | Jyoti Basu | 210 | |
| All India Forward Bloc |  |  | Chitta Basu | 34 | |
| Revolutionary Socialist Party |  |  | Kshiti Goswami | 23 | |
| Communist Party of India |  |  | Indrajit Gupta | 12 | |
| Janata Dal |  |  | Vishwanath Pratap Singh | 5 | |
| Revolutionary Communist Party of India | | Baneswar Saikia[9] | 1 | ||
| Biplobi Bangla Congress | | 1 | |||
| The parties which were contested underCPI(M) Ticket | |||||
| West Bengal Socialist Party | | | Kiranmoy Nanda | 4 | |
| Democratic Socialist Party |  | Prabodh Chandra Sinha | 2 | ||
| Marxist Forward Bloc | | Pratim Chatterjee | 2 | ||
| Total | 294 | ||||
| Party | Flag | Symbol | Leader | Contesting Seats | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indian National Congress |  |  | Somen Mitra | 288 | |
| Gorkha National Liberation Front |  | | 3 | ||
| Total | 291 | ||||
| Party | Flag | Symbol | Leader | Contesting Seats | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bharatiya Janata Party |  |  | Tapan Sikdar | 292 | |
| Total | 292 | ||||
The Left Front won the election, entering into government for a fifth consecutive term.[3] Winning 203 out of 294 seats, the 1996 election represented the first major electoral set-back for the Left Front since its foundation.[10][11] The electoral losses were primarily felt inCalcutta and the industrial areas, and nine incumbent Left Front ministers failed to get re-elected.[10] All JD candidates finished in second place and RCPI lost its representation in the assembly.[11] However, in terms of votes the Left Front and the five JD candidates got 18,143,795 votes (49.3%).[12]Jyoti Basu's fifth Left Front government was sworn in, with 48 ministers representing all 13 districts of the state.[10]
| Party | Candidates | Seats | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Left Front and allies | Communist Party of India (Marxist) | 213 | 153 | 13,670,198 | 37.16 |
| All India Forward Bloc | 34 | 21 | 1,912,183 | 5.20 | |
| Revolutionary Socialist Party | 23 | 18 | 1,367,439 | 3.72 | |
| Communist Party of India | 12 | 6 | 642,993 | 1.75 | |
| Marxist Forward Bloc | 2 | 2 | 150,099 | 0.41 | |
| Democratic Socialist Party (Prabodh Chandra) | 2 | 2 | 129,367 | 0.35 | |
| Revolutionary Communist Party of India (Rasik Bhatt) | 2 | 0 | 105,366 | 0.29 | |
| Biplobi Bangla Congress | 1 | 1 | 60,453 | 0.16 | |
| Janata Dal | 5 | 0 | 105,697 | 0.29 | |
| Indian National Congress | 288 | 82 | 14,523,964 | 39.48 | |
| Bharatiya Janata Party | 292 | 0 | 2,372,480 | 6.45 | |
| Gorkha National Liberation Front | 3 | 3 | 161,498 | 0.44 | |
| Jharkhand Party (Naren) | 8 | 1 | 145,503 | 0.40 | |
| Jharkhand Mukti Morcha | 26 | 0 | 134,436 | 0.37 | |
| Forward Bloc (Socialist) | 20 | 1 | 123,316 | 0.34 | |
| Bahujan Samaj Party | 48 | 0 | 67,853 | 0.18 | |
| Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation | 30 | 0 | 47,206 | 0.13 | |
| Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League | 3 | 0 | 43,261 | 0.12 | |
| All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) | 29 | 0 | 20,555 | 0.06 | |
| Muslim League | 20 | 0 | 19,221 | 0.05 | |
| Amra Bangalee | 46 | 0 | 17,330 | 0.05 | |
| Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Mardi) | 5 | 0 | 11,593 | 0.03 | |
| Pachim Banga Rajya Muslim League | 5 | 0 | 5,359 | 0.01 | |
| Indian National League | 7 | 0 | 4,480 | 0.01 | |
| Social Action Party | 16 | 0 | 4,476 | 0.01 | |
| Jharkhand Party | 5 | 0 | 3,533 | 0.01 | |
| Hul Jharkhand Party | 2 | 0 | 3,309 | 0.01 | |
| Bharatiya Minorities Suraksha Mahasangh | 2 | 0 | 2,448 | 0.01 | |
| Samajwadi Jan Parishad | 2 | 0 | 1,218 | 0.00 | |
| Indian Democratic People's Party | 3 | 0 | 515 | 0.00 | |
| All India Christian Democratic and Backward People's Party | 1 | 0 | 392 | 0.00 | |
| Indian Union Muslim League | 1 | 0 | 251 | 0.00 | |
| Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha | 2 | 0 | 178 | 0.00 | |
| Akhil Bharatiya Jan Sangh | 1 | 0 | 49 | 0.00 | |
| Independents | 844 | 4 | 898,677 | 2.44 | |
| Total | 2,035 | 294 | 36,788,753 | 100 | |
| Source: Election Commission of India[11] | |||||
The Congress lost power in the general elections to the BJP, however BJP was unable to obtain majority in the Parliament on its own. Jyoti Basu, who had been re-elected as CM for a record 5th time, was offered the post of Prime Minister by both the Congress & the Janata Dal following the resignation of BJP'sAtal Bihari Vajpayee within 13 days of assuming power due to lack of numbers in the Lok Sabha, lack of a consensual prime-ministerial candidate in the Congress & V. P. Singh refusing to become prime minister again. HoweverCPI(M)'s highest decision-making body refused this offer, believing that if it accepted Basu's prime-ministership, then due to lack of numbers in the Lok Sabha, it would have to bend to the will of the Congress, which it saw as a bourgeois organisation. Jyoti Basu later remarked that this decision of the CPI(M) was a "historic blunder". Thus being denied prime-ministership, Basu put forward the name of Janata Dal leader &Karnataka CMH. D. Deve Gowda as the prime-ministerial candidate, which was accepted by the Congress, Janata-Dal, Left Front & other parties allied with them. Deve Gowda resigned after a year due to withdrawal of Congress' support & was succeeded by hisMinister of External Affairs, Janata Dal leaderInder Kumar Gujral. Gujral resigned a year later, due to split in the Janata Dal caused byLalu Prasad Yadav's expulsion due to his involvement in thefodder scam & the Congress withdrawing its support due to Gujral's refusal to expelDMK from the government, whose leaderM. Karunanidhi had been implicated in assistingRajiv Gandhi's murder in Jain Commission's report.
In January 1998, following disagreements with both AICC PresidentSitaram Kesri & state PCC president Somen Mitra over the Congress party's approach towards the Left Front, Mamata Banerjee left the Congress & formedher own party, consisting mostly of the supporters of Siddhartha Shankar Ray. Her party, in alliance with BJP, won 7 seats from the state in thegeneral elections held on February that year, while the Congress retained only one seat & lost 7 others from the state. Somen Mitra resigned as the state PCC chief after this debacle & was succeeded byA. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, the lone Congress MP from the state.
