KOLKATA: The CPI(M)-led Left Front is making job creation its main plank in the upcoming West Bengal assembly election to attract young voters back to its fold.
CPI(M) central committee member Samik Lahiri said the party is banking on a large number of young candidates fielded by it this elections as well as young volunteers to gain the support of the younger generation, a crucial factor for the Left as it suffered a huge dent in support from these sections in the last few elections in the state.
"The main plank of our campaign is job creation," he said.
"There is no job in the state; nearly 1.25 crore people, from unskilled to super-skilled, have left the state owing to lack of employment," the CPI(M) leader told PTI.
He said that the Left Front has developed an alternative job creation policy for the state, which it will unveil in its manifesto for the assembly elections.
The Left Front's poll manifesto is in its final stages and will be released very soon, Lahiri said.
"We are placing maximum emphasis on job creation in the manifesto," he said.
Prolonged agitations by the then opposition Trinamool Congress had led to the fall of the seven-term Left Front government in 2011.
The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had faced tumultuous protests by the Trinamool Congress from 2007 to 2008 over demands for return of fertile land to the farmers, leading to the Tata Motors leaving Singur for Gujarat's Sanand for setting up its Nano small car plant as also the abandoning of a proposed chemical hub in Nandigram.
Lahiri said that the Left Front candidates, whose names have been announced, have already started campaign in full throttle, visiting residences of voters in their locality.
The Left Front has so far announced candidates to 224 constituencies in the 294-seat West Bengal assembly.
CPI(ML)-Liberation and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) will field candidates as associates of the Front, its chairman Biman Bose has said.
"We are stressing on our traditional method of campaign, which is house to house to visit and interaction with the voters," Lahiri said.
He said that the CPI(M) workers and candidates are emphasising on small meetings in localities and personal interactions with people, where the issues for the assembly election are being discussed.
"Instead of big congregations, we are putting stress on these to reach out to the general public," Lahiri said.
The party is making extensive use of the social media to reach out to the genZ, the new generation who can be reached more easily through this mode of communication.
The CPI(M) leader said that the party started its social media campaign quite some time ago.
Maintaining that the CPI(M) cannot match the financial might of the other biggies in the game - the Trinamool Congress and the BJP and cannot hire companies to do the work, he said, "Whatever we are doing is totally organic, our own people are preparing the content."
Lahiri said that the CPI(M) has its own social media team, which is creating the content, including slogans, themes, reels, and posters, which are being spread across social media networks like Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp by the party's workers and supporters.
"In the absence of funds required to advertise in the conventional media, we are depending on our volunteers to spread the messages through the social media platforms as much as possible," he said.
Admitting that the battle for the campaign is asymmetric owing to lack of funds, he said, "The positive side of it is that our volunteers are not paid workers and are doing this for the sake of political ideology."
Maintaining that the state has been destroyed during the Trinamool Congress rule, CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said that the main issue is to "Save Bengal".
"From irregularities in the education sector to joblessness, the people of Bengal have been victims of the misrule of the Trinamool Congress," the former Lok Sabha MP from Jadavpur said.
Chakraborty told PTI that healthcare, law and order and upliftment of all economically backward sections are some of the major issues for the Front for this assembly election.
The CPI(M), which has suffered a huge loss of its support base mainly to the BJP in the elections since 2014, is working all out to regain these voters.
The CPI(M)-led Left Front secured 39 per cent of the vote in 2011, with the CPI(M) alone accounting for 30 per cent.
A decade later, in the 2021 Assembly elections, the Left Front's tally fell to just 4.73 per cent. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) alone has secured 5.73 per cent of the votes.
"We have already held 70,000 small meetings in mohallas across the state," Lahiri said, adding that the party is depending on personal interactions with voters to bring them back to its fold.
Stating that the CPI(M) has started its campaign long before the assembly elections were announced, the former Diamond Harbour MP said that in the mohalla meetings, the leaders were discussing the problems and issues being faced by the people in their respective localities.
The elections to the 294-member West Bengal Assembly will be held in two phases - on April 23 and 29. Votes will be counted on May 4.