KOLKATA: The Left Front has once again given a drubbing to the BJP in West Bengal. The CPM, which has outperformed the BJP in all elections after the high-octane 2021 Assembly polls, gathered more numbers even in the sale of books during the Durga Puja festival across the state. Books by Left icons like Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Sitaram Yechury were picked up more at stalls than those by Hindutva champions such as Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and Deendayal Upadhyaya.
The BJP said they sold books worth Rs 8 lakh across the state, while the figure was surpassed by just two area committees of the CPM. The CPM’s Jadavpur committee sold books worth nearly Rs 6 lakh while its Shibpur counterpart in Howrah billed sales worth Rs 2 lakh. As per sources, Nadia and Malda also clocked sales of Rs 8 lakh and Rs 4 lakh, respectively.
Sources in the saffron camp said that a year after the party emerged as the main opposition in Bengal, the BJP managed to set up 4-5 bookstalls in each of its 42 organisational districts, which took the total number to around 200 stalls in the state. On the other hand, with no representation in the 294-seat Assembly, the CPM came up with around 1,300 stalls across the state.
“Our book-selling machinery is not as professional as that of the Left Front. We lacked everywhere, from the number of stalls to the variety of titles on offer,’’ a BJP leader said. Party sources said that a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 20 years in public life, titled Modi@20, had a few takers.
Aniruddha Chakraborty, the director of CPM’s publishing house National Book Agency, said one of their top sellers was Sudhanva Deshpande’s Halla Bol: The Death And Life of Safdar Hashmi.
Bestsellers
CPM stalls
A booklet on 75 years of Independence by Sitaram Yechury
Abridged versions of Das Kapital (Karl Marx), The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels) and The Motorcycle Diaries (Che Guevara)
The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin
BJP stalls
Ekatma Manawaad (Integral Humanism) by Deendayal Upadhyaya
Syamaprasader Byartho Bolidan (Syamaprasad’s futile sacrifice) by
Shantanu Sinha
Hindutva by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar