Myriad emotions after Assembly elections

New Delhi: Emotions played out in ways that ranged from hardly noticeable to intense after Left was decimated by Mamata juggernaut in West Bengal and narrowly lost power to Congress which scored a hat-rick in Assam and whose ally DMK was trounced by Jayalalitha's AIADMK in Tamil Nadu.

The defeat of the Left Front after a 34-year-old uninterrupted rule in West Bengal at the hands of the one-man army headed by firebrand Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee was even being equated to the fall of Berlin Wall in Germany in 1989.

CPI's Gurudas Das Gupta rued that the Left has not learnt from the collapse of Soviet Union.

Mamata, true to her style, described her party's spectacular showing that brought the demise of the Left as "people's victory."

"People are the winners," said the Trinamool supremo, one of the few leaders with a mass appeal.

CPI(M) central committee member Md Selim said "our failures have turned full circle since the 2009 Lok Sabha polls."

Jayalalithaa, who stormed back to power in a stunning victory in Tamil Nadu, said the people were waiting for an appropriate moment to ventilate their anger and "they had done it now."

The former chief minister said people were "totally disgusted" with the DMK Government and were waiting for the election day to show their "anger and resentment".

Her arch rival and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who is the DMK boss, took a philosophical route after being ousted in the shadow of the 2G spectrum allocation scam, saying "People have given me proper rest."

In neighbouring Kerala whose poll outcome was a cliff hanger, Congress leaders gave a subdued reaction after the party-led UDF whizzed past CPI(M)-led LDF after getting a wafer thin majority,

Oommen Chandy, who is among the front runners to be the next chief minister, and Ramesh Chennithala said the Congress would introspect reasons for the results falling short of their expectations.

"We accept the people's verdict. We will sit in the opposition and continue to fight corruption," was how an unruffled 87-year-old Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan reacted.

A blame game also quickly erupted within the vanquished CPI-M in West Bengal.

CPI(M) leader and Land Reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah, who was among the few ministers who retained his seat, held state's Commerce and Industry minister Nirupam Sen squarely responsible for the debacle of the ruling alliance.

He said chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was not to be blamed alone for the defeat.

Stating that his suggestion on "faulty" land acquisition and industrial policy was not taken note of by the party, an aggrieved Mollah said "he (Nirupam Sen) is the root-cause. Everybody in the world knew that he will be defeated in the election."

"Chief minister wanted to catch a cobra but had no experience of holding a common snake, Mollah said sarcastically.

Tarun Gogoi, who had first become Chief Minister in 2001, said people of Assam voted for the Congress as the party provided "good governance" besides ensuring economic development across the state.

"Economic development won us vote. People have rewarded us for the good work," Gogoi, who had served as Union Minister from 1991 to 1995, said.

Senior Congress leader and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee used the Assembly poll outcome to taunt BJP and Left parties asking them to learn the "right lessons" and stop attempts to destabilise the UPA government.

Home Minister P Chidambaram described the victory of TMC-Congress alliance in West Bengal and Congress in Assam as "spectacular" and termed the poll results in Tamil Nadu as "disappointing".

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, AICC in-charge of Tamil Nadu, attributed the DMK-led alliance's rout in the southern state to anti-incumbency and explained away by saying it was the turn of the Opposition AIADMK to come to power.

"In states like Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Kerala hardly any party has won successive terms. There is always a change in the government. This time there is a change," he said.

"Anti-incumbency factor played a major role. Last time, it was the turn of the DMK to win and this time if one goes by that convention it was AIADMK's turn," he said.

CPI's D Raja said Jayalalithaa's win was a "great victory" and that various issues like corruption worked against the ruling DMK-Congress combine.

"It is a great victory. It is a huge defeat of the DMK and Congress perceived as a combine of corruption. People showed their resentment against the DMK through ballots," he said.

The CPI(M) said Trinamool Congress has reaped the benefits of people's aspiration for "change" in West Bengal to inflict the "big defeat" on the party but admitted that it too has committed "mistakes".

The party also said the results of West Bengal and Kerala will be a disappointment for the "Left and democratic forces" but this will not make the Left policies and programmes "irrelevant" for the country.

'Paribortan' or change - the poll plank of Trinamool - found an echo in the words of senior CPI(M) leaders Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat as well as a party Politburo statement which said the party accepts the people's verdict.

"After the Left Front being in office for a record 34 years continuously, the people have opted for a change. The TMC-led combine has been the beneficiary of this change," the CPI(M) statement said.

"Vahan pe janta mein parivartan ka aasha rahi (People had hoped for a change there)," Yechury said.