New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) Shocked by the electoral debacle of Left parties in the Lok Sabha polls, the Communist Party of India (CPI) Wednesday asked communist leaders to shed “arrogance” and urged the need for “humility” in their behaviour.
A two-day meeting of the party’s national executive, which concluded here Wednesday, reviewed the election performance of the Left parties.

The CPI national executive “emphasised the need for humility and total absence of arrogance in the behaviour and attitude of all Left leaders and activists in relation to people”, a party statement said at the end of the meeting.

The Left parties suffered a huge set back in the elections in West Bengal and Kerala.

In the 15th Lok Sabha, their tally has been reduced to 24 from 60 in the previous.

The CPI said both national and state specific factors caused the Left parties’ pathetic performance in the polls.

The CPI’s numbers reduced to four in the new Lok Sabha as against 10 in the last. The grand old communist party of the country is even on the verge of losing its national party status.

CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan told reporters that the multi-crore-rupee SNC-Lavalin scam, involving Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Kerala state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, affected the image of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the state.