This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Communist Party of India (Marxist) – West Bengal" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Communist Party of India (Marxist) – West Bengal ভারতের কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি (মার্ক্সবাদী), পশ্চিমবঙ্গ
Abbreviation	CPI(M) WB
General Secretary	Md. Salim
Governing body	Polit Bureau
Founded	7 November 1964 (61 years ago) (1964-11-07)
Split from	Communist Party of India, West Bengal
Headquarters	Alimuddin Street,Kolkata,West Bengal
Newspaper	Ganashakti
Student wing	Students' Federation of India
Youth wing	Democratic Youth Federation of India
Women's wing	All India Democratic Women's Association
Membership(2021)	160,827
Ideology	Communism[1][2] Marxism-Leninism[3]
Political position	Left-wing[4]
National affiliation	Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance
Regional affiliation	Secular Democratic Alliance
International affiliation	IMCWP
Colors	Red
Slogan	লাল সেলাম ("Lal salam")ইনকিলাব জিন্দাবাদ ("Inquilab Zindabad")
Anthem	"The Internationale"
Lok Sabha	0 / 42
Rajya Sabha	1 / 16
West Bengal Legislative Assembly	0 / 294
Gorkhaland Territorial Administration	0 / 50
Gram Panchayats	5,922 / 63,229
Panchayat Samitis	489 / 9,730
Zilla Parishads	16 / 928
Municipalities	2 / 108
Election symbol
Party flag
Website
cpimwestbengal.org
Politics of India Political parties Elections

TheCommunist Party of India (Marxist) of West Bengal is theWest Bengal affiliate of theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) in India. The party was the leader of the longest-serving governing alliance,Left Front, inWest Bengal, holding power from 1977 to 2011. Currently, the party holds just 1 seat in Parliament through Rajya Sabha.^[5] The party is allied with theLeft Front andSecular Democratic Alliance, and leads as the larger party.

Part ofa series on
Communism in India
People M. N. Roy M. P. T. Acharya Sahajanand Saraswati Shripad Amrit Dange Abani Mukherji Yashpal A. K. Gopalan B. T. Ranadive Nripen Chakraborty P. Krishna Pillai Puran Chand Joshi Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi Bhagat Singh Ajoy Ghosh E. M. S. Namboodiripad S.K. Limaye Promode Dasgupta V. Subbiah Puchalapalli Sundarayya Kondapalli Seetharamaiah Saroj Dutta Jyoti Basu Bhupesh Gupta Hare Krishna Konar Dasarath Deb Harkishan Singh Surjeet T. Nagi Reddy Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri Charu Majumdar Indrajit Gupta E. K. Nayanar V. S. Achuthanandan Geeta Mukherjee Mohit Sen A. G. Noorani Biman Bose Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Pinarayi Vijayan Vinod Mishra Manik Sarkar D. Raja Ganapathy Kobad Ghandy Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya Sitaram Yechury Anuradha Ghandy Mohammed Salim
History Colonial period and partition Communism in the independence movement Conspiracy cases Peshawar Kanpur Bolshevik Meerut Kakori conspiracy Foundation of the CPI Tanka movement Quit India Movement Telangana Rebellion 1946 Naval Uprising Tebhaga movement Punnapra-Vayalar uprising Post-independence and Cold War 2nd Congress of the CPI Goa liberation movement 1957 general election in Kerala Angamaly police firing Sino-Indian border dispute 1964 split in the CPI Historic Eight Documents Naxalite–Maoist insurgency Naxalbari uprising Timeline Left Front Tripura West Bengal Rajan case Operation Barga Left Democratic Front Indravelli massacre Contemporary history Bara massacre Laxmanpur Bathe massacre Maoism in the Nandigram violence Salwa Judum 2013 Naxal attack in Darbha valley
Ideologies Marxism–Leninism Maoism Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Stalinism Marxist feminism Marxist humanism National communism Primitive communism Trotskyism
Principles Agrarian socialism Anti-fascism Anti-imperialism Class conflict Land reform in Kerala Left-wing nationalism Left-wing populism People's war Proletarian internationalism Revolutionary socialism Welfare
Current organisations AIFB TUCC BPI CPI AISF AITUC AIYF BKMU NFIW CPI(M) AIDWA AIKS CITU DYFI SFI CPI (Maoist) KAMS PLGA RYL CPI(ML)L AIKM AISA CPIML ND MCPI(U) AICTU MFB MLPI (Red Flag) NSA RCPI RMPI RSP UCPI
Defunct organisations AICP BLPI CIC CC Communist Marxist Party Communist Party of French India Comrades Association CPI (ML) HSRA ICS Lal Communist Party Lal Sena LKPH MCPI WPP
Media Deshabhimani Ganashakti LeftWord Books Nava Telangana People's Democracy Prajasakti Qaumi Jang Theekkathir Visalaandhra
Related topics Anarchism in India Communism in Kerala Communism in Nepal Communist movements in India Gandhian socialism Inquilab Zindabad Lal Salam List of communist parties in India Red corridor Socialism in India State of socialist orientation
Communism portal
v t e

Part ofa series on
Communism
Concepts Anti-capitalism Class conflict Class consciousness Classless society Collective leadership Communist revolution Commune Communist society Critique of political economy Free association "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" Market abolitionism Proletarian internationalism Labour movement Social revolution Stateless society Wage slavery Workers' self-management World revolution Dictatorship of the proletariat
Economics Planned economy Gift economy Common ownership Socialization Economic democracy Use value
Variants Anarchist Crypto Euro Left Marxism Leninist National Pre-Marxist Primitive Religious Christian Catholic World
History Communist League First International Second International Third International Fourth International Fifth International
Organisations Communist party list WPC WFTU WFDY IUS WIDF WFSW IOR
People Mazdak More Meslier Babeuf Marx Engels Morris Kropotkin Malatesta Pannekoek Du Bois Lenin Luxemburg Kollontai Stalin Trotsky Lukács Thälmann Makhno Bukharin Ho Gramsci Tito Togliatti Benjamin Khrushchev Mao Pot Zhou James Padmore Sartre Hoxha Beauvoir Nkrumah Kim Hobsbawm Althusser Freire Pasolini Mandel Aidit Raja Fanon Castro Berger Guevara Guattari Debord Amin Berlinguer Negri Guzmán Badiou Sison Newton Ali Davis Holloway Hampton Žižek Sankara Öcalan Sánchez Gordillo Gilmore Marcos Hardt Dean Graeber Lordon Kelley Fisher Prashad Hatherley Moufawad-Paul Saito
By region Brazil Cambodia Colombia France India Kerala Korea Malaysia Nepal Peru Philippines Poland Russia Sri Lanka Sumatra Vietnam
Symbols Hammer and sickle Red flag (politics) Red star "The Internationale" "Workers of the world, unite!"
Criticism Anti-communism Communist propaganda Criticism of communist party rule Totalitarianism Criticism of Marxism
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anti anti-communism Anti-communist mass killings Anti-fascism Communist state Communitarianism Council communism Crimes against humanity Genocide Cambodian genocide Holodomor Genocides committed by the Soviet Union Mass killings under communist regimes Internationalism Intentional community Left-wing politics Old Left New Left LGBTQ rights Marx's theory of alienation National communism Romania Red Scare Revolutionary socialism Socialist economics Socialist mode of production Trade union War communism Worker cooperative
Communism portal Socialism portal
v t e

Part ofa series on
Marxism–Leninism
Concepts Administrative-command system Anti-imperialism Anti-revisionism Central planning Soviet-type Collective farming Collective leadership Commanding heights of the economy Democratic centralism Dialectical logic Dialectical materialism Foco Intensification of the class struggle under socialism Labor aristocracy Marxist–Leninist atheism National democracy revolution state New Soviet man Party spirit Popular front Proletarian internationalism Protracted people's war Self-criticism Social fascism Socialism in one country Socialist patriotism Soviet Yugoslav State socialist Soviet republic Theory of the productive forces Third Period Vanguardism Wars of national liberation Unified power
Variants Browderism Camilism Fidelismo Guevarism Ho Chi Minh Thought Hoxhaism Husakism Juche Kádárism Kaysone Phomvihane Thought Khrushchevism Machelism Maoism Gonzalo Thought Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Prachanda Path Sankarism Socialism with Chinese characteristics Stalinism Neo- Titoism
Politicians Lenin Stalin Foster Dimitrov Thälmann Hồ Pollitt Browder Rákosi Nosaka Bierut Tito Togliatti Ulbricht Kaganovich Mao Khrushchev Choibalsan Díaz Ibárruri Gottwald Thorez Chervenkov Gheorghiu-Dej Zachariadis Deng Gomułka Brezhnev Hoxha Namboodiripad Hall Giáp Zhivkov Bakdash Kim Kádár Honecker Husák Koliševski Qasim Taraki Ceaușescu Barre Adhikari Kaysone Neto Jaruzelski Aidit Mugabe Chin Pot Habash Castro Jiang (Zemin) Guevara Lara Garang Gorbachev Kérékou Machel Mengistu Bains Brar Wijeweera Bishop Zyuganov Ortega Cano Kaypakkaya Sankara Xi Dahal Jadid
Intellectuals Marx Engels Lukács Roy Bukharin Dutt Haywood Chen Trường Bettelheim Dutta Hinton Camilo Parenti Hirschman Guzmán Badiou Andreyeva Sison Losurdo Newton Avakian Davis Trọng Ghandy Dean Jiang (Shigong) Li
Theoretical works Foundations of Leninism(1924) Dialectical and Historical Materialism(1938) The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)(1938) Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR(1951) A Critique of Soviet Economics(1960) Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism(1960) Guerrilla Warfare(1961) Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung(1964) President Ho Chi Minh's Testament(1969) The Governance of China(2014)
History Soviet Union 1927–1953 1953–1964 1964–1982 1982–1991 Great Break Collectivization in the Soviet Union Industrialization in the Soviet Union Great Purge Spanish Civil War World War II Great Patriotic War Greek Civil War Cold War Eastern Bloc Chinese Revolution China 1949–1976 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–present Korean War Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution De-Stalinization Warsaw Pact Non-Aligned Movement Vietnam War Sino-Soviet split Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Great Leap Forward Portuguese Colonial War Black power movement Nicaraguan Revolution Cultural Revolution Prague Spring Naxalite insurgency Revolutions of 1989 Nepalese Civil War
By country Afghanistan Albania Angola Benin Bulgaria Cambodia 1975–79 1979–92 China Congo Cuba Czechoslovakia Czechia Slovakia East Germany Ethiopia Grenada Hungary Laos Mongolia Mozambique North Korea Poland Romania Somalia South Yemen Soviet Union Armenia Azerbaijan Byelarus Estonia Georgia Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Russia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan Vietnam Yugoslavia Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Slovenia
Organizations Comecon Comintern Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of Cuba Communist Party of India Communist Party of Kampuchea Communist Party of the Russian Federation Communist Party of the Soviet Union Communist Party of Vietnam French Communist Party IMCWP Indochinese Communist Party Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party Lao People's Revolutionary Party Nepal Communist Party Party of Labour of Albania Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Sandinista National Liberation Front Workers' Party of Korea
Related topics All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Anti-communism Mass killings Bolshevism Crimes against humanity under communist regimes Mass killings Criticism of communist party rule Cult of personality Intercommunalism Leninism Marxist schools of thought National Bolshevism New class Post-communism Red fascism Red Scare Second Second World State ideology of China State ideology of the Soviet Union State capitalism State socialism Tankie Third-Worldism Totalitarianism Trotskyism
Communism portal Politics portal
v t e

Part ofa series on
Marxism
Outline
Foundations Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ethics Historical materialism Ideology Praxis Reification Economic analysis Labour theory of value Law of value Value-form Abstract & concrete labour Socially necessary labour time Use value Exchange value Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Relations of production Commodity (fetishism) Surplus product Surplus value Exploitation Wage labour Capital (accumulation) Critique of political economy Crisis theory Imperialism Reserve army of labour Tendency of the rate of profit to fall Social and political theory Class Bourgeoisie Proletariat Working class Lumpenproletariat Class consciousness False consciousness Classless society State theory State capitalism Withering away of the state Democracy Democratic centralism Dictatorship of the proletariat Radical democracy Soviet democracy Base and superstructure Communist society Cultural hegemony Human nature Immiseration Metabolic rift Private property Social reproduction Theory of history Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution
Schools of thought Foundational Classical Orthodox Revisionism Revolutionary Marxism Leninism Marxism–Leninism Bukharinism Guevarism Hoxhaism Maoism Socialism with Chinese characteristics Stalinism Titoism Trotskyism Western Marxism Frankfurt School Humanist Praxis School Structural Libertarian Marxism Autonomism Communization Council communism Left communism Situationism Academic & Post-1968 schools Analytical Budapest School Dependency theory Ecological Feminist Neo- Open New Marx Reading Political Post- Regulation school Subaltern Studies Value-criticism World-systems theory Other tendencies Austrian Black radical tradition Eurocommunism Liberal Nkrumaism
Fields of study Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural studies Film theory Geography Historiography International relations Literary criticism Religion
Theoretical works Foundational texts Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Theses on Feuerbach The German Ideology Wage Labour and Capital The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Das Kapital Critique of the Gotha Programme Anti-Dühring The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Early 20th century What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins Mid-20th century &New Left On Practice Dialectic of Enlightenment Labor and Monopoly Capital Monopoly Capital The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Late 20th & 21st century Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Marx's Ecology Empire Caliban and the Witch Capitalist Realism Capital in the Anthropocene
People Founders Marx Engels Classical &Orthodox Bernstein Bukharin Connolly Kautsky Kollontai Lafargue Lenin Liebknecht Luxemburg Morris Plekhanov Trotsky Zetkin Western Marxists Adorno Althusser Benjamin Bloch Gramsci Habermas Horkheimer Korsch Lefebvre Lukács Marcuse Poulantzas Sartre Austromarxists Adler Bauer Hilferding Left communists Bordiga Damen Gorter Mattick Pannekoek Economists Braverman Grossman Kalecki Mandel Marini Rubin Sweezy Uno Historians Anderson Deutscher Hobsbawm Thompson Wood Revolutionary leaders Castro Guevara Hampton Ho Mao Newton Sankara Stalin Anti-colonial &Postcolonial theorists Amin Cabral Davis Du Bois Fanon James Jones Mariátegui Mohanty Nkrumah Rodney Spivak Later 20th &21st century Badiou Balibar Bensaïd Butler Cohen Davis Debord Eagleton Federici Foster Fraser Hall Harvey Heinrich Jameson Laclau &Mouffe Losurdo Löwy Miliband Negri Parenti Postone Rancière Saito Vogel Wallerstein Williams Wright Žižek
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics Critiques Criticism of Marxism Concepts Conflict theory Economic determinism Economism Intercommunalism Postcolonialism Scientific socialism Vanguardism Vulgar Marxism Movements Communism (History) Left-wing politics New Old Ultra Municipalism Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Eco- Market Reformist Revolutionary Social democracy Utopian Practices Collectivization Nationalization Planned economy Worker cooperative Workers' council
Communism portal Socialism portal
v t e

In the following period the Communist Party underwent a verticala split in the Communist Party of India in 1964 with a section of the party includingMuzaffar Ahmad,Jyoti Basu,Promode Dasgupta andHare Krishna Konar going on to form theCommunist Party of India (Marxist). There were several ongoing ideological conflicts between sections within the Communist Party about the nature of theIndian State and the characterisation and method of interaction with theIndian National Congress, about the approach towards theongoing debate between theSoviet Union and China and with regards to the handling of theborder disputes between India and China.

These debates were further exacerbated by the food movement in West Bengal and brought to the forefront by the rising border tensions between India and China.^[6] The Communist Party had also become the second largest party in theLok Sabha following the1962 Indian general election with nearly 10% vote share which is described to have brought prominence to the internal divisions of the party.^[7]

In theWest Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1967, fourteen opposition parties contested through two pre-poll political alliances;^[8] the CPI-M ledUnited Left Front and the CPI andBangla Congress (splinter of the Congress party formed in 1966) ledPeople's United Left Front.^[9] The CPI-M became the second largest party outstripping its former party, the CPI.

For the1977 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, negotiations between theJanata Party and theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) broke down.^[10] This led to a three sided contest between theIndian National Congress, the Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ledLeft Front coalition. The results of the election was a surprising sweep for the Left Front winning 230 seats out of 290 with the CPI-M winning an absolute majority on its own,Jyoti Basu became thechief minister of West Bengal.

The state saw rapid developments in this period, with theLand Reforms and thePanchayat System being two of the many notable ones. In this time, the state had become one of the leaders in agricultural output, being theleading producer of rice and the second leading producer of potatoes.^[11] In the first term of the coming to power, the Left Front government under Basu initiated a number of agrarian and institutional reforms which resulted in reduction ofpoverty rates, an exponential rise inagricultural production and decrease inpolitical polarisation.^[12][13][14] It also enabled the large scale adoption of technological advancements which had earlier been brought in through theGreen Revolution in India in the 1960s.^[12][13] The agricultural growth jumped from an annual average of 0.6% between 1970–1980 to over 7% between 1980–1990 and the state was described as an agricultural success story of the 1980s.^[13][15] During this period, the state of West Bengal moved from being a food importer to a food exporter and became the largest producer of rice outstripping the states ofAndhra Pradesh andPunjab which had previously held the status.^[15] TheHuman Development Index was also noted to have improved at a much faster rate than in other states, growing from being the lowest in the country in 1975 to above the national average in 1990.^[16]

In 2000, Jyoti Basu resigned as the chief minister. He was succeeded byBuddhadeb Bhattacharjee.^[17] Unlike other orthodox leaders, Buddhadeb was more open to market and technological reforms. He attempted to industrialize West Bengal by bringing aTata motors plant inSingur but this erupted ahuge controversy. Buddhadeb's government requested farmers to give the land, which sparked huge protests. LaterTata Group ultimately backed out of the project. There was alsoviolence inNandigram as well, in which many protesters died due to police firing.^[18]

Violence, economic stagnation, the surge ofMamata Banerjee and herTMC led to the decline of support of Buddhadeb and the CPI(M), even among the core voters like peasants and workers. A demand for change started, which eventually led to the fall of the 34-years long Left Front government in2011.^{[citation needed]}

No	Portrait	Secretary	Term	Total years as secretary
1		Promode Dasgupta	1964 - 1982	18 Years
2		Saroj Mukherjee	1982 - 1990	8 Years
3		Sailen Dasgupta	1991 – 1998	7 Years
4		Anil Biswas	1998 - 2006	8 Years
5		Biman Bose	2006 - 2015	9 Years
6		Surjya Kanta Mishra	2015 - 2022	7 Years
7		Mohammed Salim	2022–present	3 years, 255 days

No.	Name	Portrait	Term of office		Days in office
1	Jyoti Basu		21 June 1977	23 May 1982	23 years 137 days
			24 May 1982	29 March 1987
			30 March 1987	18 June 1991
			19 June 1991	15 May 1996
			16 May 1996	5 November 2000
2	Buddhadeb Bhattacharya		6 November 2000	14 May 2001	10 years 188 days
			15 May 2001	17 May 2006
			18 May 2006	13 May 2011

Election Year	Party leader	Overall votes	% of overall votes	Total seats	seats won/ seats contensted	+/- in seats	+/- in vote share	Sitting side
AsCommunist Party of India (Marxist)
1967	Jyoti Basu	2,293,026	18.11%	280	43 / 135	new	new	Opposition
1969		2,676,981	20.00%	280	80 / 190	37	1.9%	Opposition
1971		N/A	27.45%	294	113 / 200	33	N/A	Opposition
1972		5,080,828	27.45%	294	14 / 209	99	N/A	Opposition
1977		5,080,828	35.46%	294	178 / 224	164	8.01	Government
1982		8,655,371	38.49%	294	174 / 209	4	3.03	Government
1987		10,285,723	39.12%	294	187 / 212	13	0.89	Government
1991		11,418,822	36.87%	294	182 / 204	2	2.43	Government
1996		13,670,198	37.16%	294	153 / 213	32	1.05	Government
2001	Buddhadeb Bhattacharya	13,402,603	36.59%	294	143 / 211	14	1.33	Government
2006		14,652,200	37.13%	294	176 / 212	33	0.54	Government
2011		14,330,061	30.08%	294	40 / 213	136	7.05	Opposition
2016	Surjya Kanta Mishra	10,802,058	19.75%	294	26 / 148	14	10.35	Opposition
2021		2,837,276	4.73%	294	0 / 136	26	15.02	Lost

Election Year	Overall Votes	% of overall votes	Total seats	Seats won/ Seats contested	+/- in seats	+/- in vote share
AsCommunist Party of India (Marxist)
1967	2,012,522	15.6 %	40	5 / 16	New	New
1971	4,485,105	34.3 %		20 / 38	15	18.7
1977	3,839,091	26.1 %	42	17 / 20	3	8.2%
1980	8,199,926	39.9 %		28 / 31	11	13.8%
1984	9,119,546	35.9 %		18 / 31	10	4%
1989	12,150,017	38.4 %		27 / 31	9	2.5%
1991	10,934,583	35.2 %		27 / 30		3.2%
1996	13,467,522	36.7 %		23 / 31	4	1.5%
1998	12,931,639	35.4 %		24 / 32	1	1.3%
1999	12,553,991	35.6 %		21 / 32	3	0.2%
2004	14,271,042	38.6%		26 / 32	5	3.0%
2009	14,144,667	33.1 %		9 / 32	17	5.5%
2014	11,720,997	23.0%		2 / 32	7	10.1%
2019	3,594,283	6.3 %		0 / 31	2	16.7%
2024	3,416,941	5.7 %		0 / 23		0.6%

• Left Front (West Bengal)
• Communist Party of India (Marxist), Kerala
• Communist Party of India (Marxist), Tripura
• Communist Party of India (Marxist), Tamil Nadu

• Communist Party of India (Marxist)
• Political parties in West Bengal

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles needing additional references from December 2023
• All articles needing additional references
• Use dmy dates from January 2025
• Use Indian English from January 2025
• All Wikipedia articles written in Indian English
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Bengali-language text
• Pages using infobox political party with unknown parameters
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2025