Left loses all its ground in Punjab, combined vote share below 1%

BATHINDA: It has been quarter of a century since any Left party won a parliamentary seat in Punjab, while their last assembly seat came 22 years ago (in 2002) as a Congress ally.
After that, even the combined vote share of both the CPI and the CPI (M) has remained below 1%. Many times, the Left trailed even Nota (none of the above). Situation had come to such a pass that the Communist Party of India contested only 3 parliamentary seats out of 13 this time, while the CPI (Marxist) went for just one.

The CPI fielded Daswinder Kaur from Amritsar, Gurdial Singh from Khadoor Sahib, and Gurcharan Singh from Faridkot, while the CPI (M) fielded trade unionist Purshotam Lal Bilga from Jalandhar.Daswinder Kaur's tally of 2,481 votes was poorer than Nota's 3,685. Gurdial Singh (3,838), Gurcharan Singh (14,935), and Bilga (5,958) also failed to impress.
Nathu Ram (Malout) and Gurjant Singh Kuttiwal (Pakka Kalan, now Bathinda Rural) were CPI's two assembly winners as a Congress ally in 2002. Bhan Singh Bhaura won the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat in 1999, again in alliance with the Congress. All these three seats were reserved for the scheduled castes then. Later, the Left scored a duck in five consecutive Lok Sabha polls and four assembly elections. The CPI (M) had its best performance in the 1999 Lok Sabha contests, when Ajit Singh polled 1.9 lakh votes in Sangrur for a vote share of 26.87%, as a Congress ally. The last assembly win, of Tarsem Jodhan, was in 1992.
The decline of the Left movement began from its cradle universities in the 1980s in a phase of extremism and socialism's lost appeal among the students. In the 2019 parliamentary polls, the CPI's vote share plummeted to 0.31% and that of the CPI (M) to 0.08%. The CPI got only 34,074 votes (0.2% share) in the 2017 assembly polls. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the Left received only 0.17% votes, while in the 2012 assembly polls, the CPI had a 0.82% vote share and the CPI (M) 0.16%.