Sitting on red plastic chairs around wooden tables at the CPI(M) office at Hindmotor in the Uttarpara Assembly constituency in Hooghly, party workers arrange campaign material for their candidate Minakshi Mukherjee.They pore over a postcard featuring a printed message from Minakshi, which is meant for distribution among local residents, especially young voters.Advertisement“So I want to say that don’t give your vote to those who seek it in the name of religion. You know that prices of rice and dal, of petrol and domestic gas do not depend on religion. It (price hike) affects us all,” says Mnakshi’s letter, going after the principal Opposition BJP.Hitting out at the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), the letter states: “And those (TMC) who have won in elections for the last 15 years and have only stolen money and taken bribes, ask them why did they dupe us?”Sitting in another room at the party office, Minakshi Mukherjee, the 40-year-old CPI(M) central committee member, explains: “The post card is a new initiative. We are trying to connect to youths in different ways. It is for them to decide whom to vote. We have held hundreds of meetings with youths to know what they think.”AdvertisementMinakshi is among several prominent youth leaders of the CPI(M), who have been fielded by the party from various key constituencies in the current West Bengal Assembly elections. They also include former Students’ Federation of India (SFI)’s national general secretary Mayukh Biswas (Damdum seat), Kalatan Dasgupta (Panihati), Dipsita Dhar (Damdum Uttar), and Afreen Begum (Ballygunge). Besides their oratorical skills and public outreach, they are known for working as party activists.The CPI(M)-led Left is fighting the Bengal polls in an alliance with the Indian Secular Front (ISF) and the CPI(ML) Liberation. The CPI(M) is contesting 195 of the state’s 294 seats.In 2021, the Left fought the polls as part of a coalition with the Congress and the ISF. While both the Left and the Congress could not open their accounts, the ISF won one seat.With the current elections again appearing to turn essentially into a battle between the TMC and the BJP, the CPI(M) is trying to challenge this electoral binary with renewed zeal and fresh ideas.“We are the alternative. We don’t talk about religion and doles. But we talk about real issues. Issues like education, health, employment, civic amenities, which are in shambles during the TMC regime – and all of these are not part of debates in TMC and BJP,” says Minakshi.In a jolt to the CPI(M), one of its rising young leaders, Pratikur Rahman, had quit the party two months ago and joined the TMC in the presence of its national general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee, against whom he had contested, unsuccessfully, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.Minakshi looks at her cell phone which rings constantly. She has multiple rallies to address besides meeting people through the day.“If we are not relevant then why are TMC and BJP spending more time attacking us than each other?” she asks.Minakshi is pitted against the TMC’s Sirsanya Bandopadhyay, son of party heavyweight MP Kalyan Banerjee, the BJP’s Dipanjan Chakraborty and the Congress’s Subrata Mukhopadhyay.About 20 kms away, in Panihati in North 24 Parganas, the CPI(M)’s candidate, Kalatan Dasgupta, 40, is seen canvassing by a roadside under a scorching sun. He had started his political innings with the SFI.In September 2024, Kalatan was arrested by the Bengal police over a viral audio clip regarding protests against a junior doctor’s rape-murder in RG Kar Medical College Hospital, which had convulsed the country. Out on bail granted by the Calcutta High Court, Kalatan is contesting against the RG Kar victim’s mother, Ratna Debnath, who is fighting on a BJP ticket.Addressing a street-corner meeting, Kalatan highlights various issues, ranging from the Election Commission (EC)’s controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and various alleged scams involving TMC leaders, to women security and local civic problems concerning drinking water and drainage.The TMC has nominated Tirthankar Ghosh from Panihati, son of sitting party MLA Nirmal Ghosh.Kalatan has also faced personal attacks from his rivals, which he responds with a smile. Targeting the BJP, he says: “Prime Minister came to Panihati and said, if their candidate wins, they will reopen the RG Kar case. That means they are blackmailing the people of Panihati.”In Kolkata’s Ballygunge, the CPI(M) has fielded Afreen Begum against senior TMC leader and minister Sovandev Chattopadhyay and the BJP’s Shatorupa. This constituency had been a stronghold of late TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee, who had defeated the BJP candidate in 2021 by over 75,000 votes. However, following his demise, in the 2022 bypoll, the CPI(M)’s Saira Shah Halim finished as the runner-up in the seat, losing to the TMC’s Babul Supriya by just about 20,000 votes.A research scholar in Jadavpur University, Afreen, 29, says: “We are here to demand employment for youths and education for all. We want a secular and corruption-free government.”In some of these seats, the CPI(M) camp is hopeful that its youth brigade would be able to make a breakthrough and help the party clinch them.The CPI(M) has been going all out to regain its ground in the state. A measure of its attempts could be gauged from the point that the 85-year CPI(M) veteran Biman Bose has also hit the campaign trail, joining the party’s padyatra in various districts including Kolkata, South and North 24 Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly.Left’s rise and fallIn the 2011 elections, the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC ousted the CPI(M) from power, putting an end to the Left Front’s 34-year rule in the state. In the 2006 polls, the CPI(M) had bagged 176 seats on its own, garnering 37.13% vote share.However, since 2011, the CPI(M) has seen a steady decline in its seats and vote share. In 2011, the CPI(M) got 40 seats with 30.08% votes.In 2016 polls, when the CPI(M) fought in alignment with the Congress, the CPI(M) could win 26 seats while its votes dropped to 19.75 %.In 2021, the CPI(M) drew a blank, with its votes plunging to just 4.73%.In the 2022 municipal polls, the CPI(M) garnered nearly 14% vote share in Bengal, getting 12% votes in Kolkata. In the 2023 panchayat polls, which saw widespread violence across the state, the CPI(M) managed to secure about 14% votes.However, in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when the Left Front had a tie-up with the Congress, the CPI(M)’s vote share dipped below 6%, even as the Left failed to open its account again.