India elections: Pinarayi Vijayan’s LDF trounced at the polls in Kerala, Congress back in power

The defeat of the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala on Monday will for the first time see India not having a communist chief minister in nearly half a century.

Pinarayi Vijayan’s LDF government was trounced at the polls in Kerala, with the Congress back in power, bringing an end to the communists, who were a major opposition force in India since the first election in 1951-52.

Way back in the first general elections in the country, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was the largest opposition outfit with 16 seats. In 1957, the CPI won elections in Kerala (it became a state in 1956), emerging as the first democratically-elected communist government in the world.

EMS Namboodripad, the CPI leader, became the chief minister. But two years later, then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru dismissed the government and imposed President’s rule in the state.

The CPI was split in 1964 and saw the emergence of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). And five years later, extremists split the reds further by starting the CPI (ML), which led to the Naxalite movement in the country.

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In 1977, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government came to power in West Bengal and ruled for 34 years till 2011, making it the longest-serving, democratically elected communist government in the world.

Jyoti Basu was the longest-serving chief minister of the state (1977-2000) and was tipped to become the prime minister of the country following the 1996 general elections, which resulted in a hung parliament. Basu was chosen as the new consensus leader of the opposition to lead the country, but the CPI(M) ruled against it, a decision that Basu described as “a historic blunder.”

Besides West Bengal and Kerala, the communists also ruled Tripura. They were in power from 1978 to 1988 and again from 1993 to 2018. But the past few years have seen a steady decline in the fortunes of the communists across Indian states.

Mamata Banerjee brought an end to their rule in West Bengal in 2011, leaving Kerala as the only state where they had a significant presence.

The defeat of the Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala has brought an end to communist rule in Indian states. For the first time in half a century India will not have a communist chief minister.