CPI(M) to roll out 1,000-km 'Bangla Bachao Yatra' targeting TMC and BJP; reclaim political ground

Kolkata, Nov 18 (PTI) The CPI(M) will launch a 1,000-km 'Bangla Bachao Yatra' on November 29, a statewide mobilisation it claims will expose "injustice, loot and systematic democratic erosion" under the TMC-led state government while countering what it calls the BJP-led Centre's "anti-people policies" that have deepened distress across Bengal.

The once-formidable Left, now struggling for electoral relevance, hopes the drive will re-energise its cadre and reconnect with voters, setting the stage for an intense political winter ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections.

The yatra, which will run from November 29 to December 17, will begin at Tufanganj in Cooch Behar district in North Bengal and conclude at Kamarhati in North 24 Parganas district, covering 1,000 km across 11 districts and several adjoining pockets.

Multiple sub-yatras from neighbouring regions will converge with the main caravan.

The CPI(M) said the route has been designed to "connect with every segment of Bengal that has suffered due to misgovernance".

According to party organisers, the mobilisation will highlight a broad spectrum of grievances from the alleged collapse of rural healthcare and schooling to distress among farmers, migrant workers, tea garden labourers, bidi workers and gig-economy earners.

The CPI(M) claims that both governments, in their own ways, have aggravated livelihood and democratic crises in Bengal.

While the TMC, it alleges, has presided over "loot, intimidation, and extortion-driven governance", the BJP at the Centre has pursued "anti-people economic policies" that have deepened unemployment, inflation and rural distress.

CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim, addressing a select group of journalists in Kolkata on Monday night, said the "Bangla Bachao Yatra" was intended as a corrective movement.

"The Bengal government has turned the state into story of loot, corruption, misrule and deprivation, while the BJP at the Centre has unleashed policies that have devastated workers, farmers and the poor," Salim said.

"From education to employment, from healthcare to women's safety, every pillar has been hollowed out. This yatra is our pledge to restore dignity, rights and democracy, and to resist anti-people policies in Delhi and anti-people governance in Kolkata," he said.

Salim said the march will foreground real-life testimonies of those who have been "caught between TMC's corruption and the BJP's economic assault".

"Bengal must reclaim its voice," he added.

The TMC did not immediately respond to the announcement. The BJP has typically dismissed such Left initiatives as "irrelevant political exercises".

CPI(M) leaders, however, insist that Bengal's current bipolar politics is "a compulsion, not a choice", and the yatra seeks to rebuild a third pole rooted in rights and accountability.

For the CPI(M), the yatra comes at a critical political moment.

Once the unchallenged force in West Bengal, ruling uninterruptedly from 1977 to 2011, the Left has been pushed to the margins over the past decade.

It has drawn a blank in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 Assembly elections, even losing the status of principal opposition to the BJP.

The decline in vote share has been dramatic.

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 4.73 per cent.

In seat-sharing arrangements with the Congress in 2016, 2021 and again in 2024 under the Sanyukta Morcha banner, which also included smaller Left parties and the Indian Secular Front, the combine mustered only around 10 per cent.

The BJP, meanwhile, commands nearly 39 per cent of the opposition vote share, a dramatic realignment in Bengal's political landscape.

This prolonged erosion persists despite the CPI(M)'s mass organisations, particularly its student and youth wings, leading several large yatras in recent years.

Those campaigns drew tens of thousands onto the streets on issues such as unemployment, corruption, and women's safety. Yet the enthusiasm did not translate into electoral gains, a paradox the Left openly acknowledges as its most pressing challenge.

With both the BJP and the TMC sharpening their messaging ahead of 2026, the CPI(M)'s 1,000-km yatra signals a determined attempt to re-enter Bengal's polarised political arena and reposition itself as a viable alternative. PTI PNT RG