Kolkata, Aug 14 (IANS) Its electoral fortunes going downhill over the past one year, West Bengal’s ruling Left Front Friday sought to enthuse its cadre by giving a call for reaching out to the masses through agitations and rallies.
“Some have misunderstood us. Some others have been misled. We have to reach out to all of them,” West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said at a memorial meeting for party leader Subhas Chakraborty who died earlier this month.

“Subhas could reach out to all. We will also dispel all confusions and misunderstandings among the public,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Bhattacharjee said in a reference to the deceased leader whose last journey had drawn lakhs of people on the roads of Kolkata and the neighbouring North 24 Pargnas.

He conceded that the CPI-M-led LF has made blunders and perpetrated wrongs, but said the errors were being rectified.

“The streets will show us the way forward. We will carry the Leftist ideals forward in West Bengal,” Bhattacharjee told a packed Netaji Indoor Stadium, where the state’s leaders of Congress and the Party for Democratic Socialism were present.

The LF had lost the elections to the rural and civic bodies as also the Lok Sabha polls to the Trinamool-led opposition since last year.

Attacking the Congress-Trinamool alliance, Bhattacharjee said: “It is a hodgepodge rainbow alliance. They are talking big. They say they want change. But what change do they want? Do they want to tread the rightist path?”

CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose said the LF’s sliding fortunes cannot be reversed in the absence of a movement.

“We must take inspiration from Subhas’s uncompromising fight in the people’s cause and establish close contact with the masses,” Bose said.

LF partner Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh said it was high time the Leftists made a turnaround. “We have to stand like a rock against the forces of oppression”.