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Legislative Assembly elections were held in the Indian state of West Bengal in 1996. The election took place simultaneously with the 1996 Indian general election.[1][2] This was the last election Jyoti Basu contested, as he retired from politics in 2000.
Parties
Left Front
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had fielded 70 new candidates, but many of them failed to get elected.[3] The All India Forward Bloc had suffered a split before the election, with the emergence of the Forward Bloc (Socialist).[3]
The Left Front supported Janata Dal candidates in five constituencies.
Indian National Congress
Factionalism was rife within the state Congress unit. After being out of power in the state for about 20 years with no significant increase in either vote-share or number of seats in the last 15 years, most state Congress leaders had given up the hopes of defeating the Left Front & sought to re-evaluate their strategy. The elections took place alongside the general elections, in which there were 4 major players - the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Hindu right wing alliance, the centre-left alliance led by Janata Dal made up of Congress dissidents, the centrist alliance of the Congress party & the leftist alliance of Communist parties, out of which the BJP & JD didn't have much influence in the state. In 1991, the Congress under P. V. Narasimha Rao was able to form a minority government with the support of the Janata Dal, however Rao's tenure saw the Congress rife with defection of some of its senior leaders & charges of corruption. The political climate of India was charged with the issue of Ram-mandir, following the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. The BJP made the construction of Ram-mandir on the Ram Janmabhoomi site its primary electoral promise while the Janata Dal banked on the implementation of the Mandal Commission report as its main electoral plank in order to counter the BJP, leading to conflict between OBC & SC groups. However, the Mandir-Mandal issue didn't have much impact in the politics of the state which had been under Communist rule since 1977. As the Janata Dal was open to supporting both BJP & Congress, the support of the Left Front became the more important on the national stage. CPI(M) stalwart & the incumbent Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had been even offered the post of Prime Minister by the Congress when the Janata Dal government of V. P. Singh collapsed in 1990 due to BJP's withdrawal of support & again when the Congress withdrew its support from Chandra Shekhar's government in 1991.
In midst of such political instability, 2 factions developed within the state Congress unit. One faction led by Pranab Mukherjee was in favour of forging an electoral understanding with the Left Front in the state in order to gain their support on the national level. The other faction led by anti-Communist leaders like Siddharta Shankar Ray & Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi was stauchly opposed to it. The rivalry between these 2 groups played out in open during the 1992 elections to the post of state PCC president. The pro-Communist faction sided with Mukherjee's protégé, 4-time Sealdah MLA Somen Mitra, while the anti-Communist faction sided with Ray's protégé, state Youth Congress president & South Kolkata MP Mamata Banerjee.[4] Mukherjee played a decisive role in ensuring Mitra's victory in this election by having Banerjee's main supporter Ray sent out of the state as India's ambassador to the US at that time. Somen Mitra's and Mamata Banerjee's factions continued to fight over the choice of candidates to be fielded.[5] Banerjee played an important role in rallying public support for the party & fielding many new faces from the Youth Congress as the party's candidate.[5][6]
The Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury contested the Nabagram seat from jail, being imprisoned on murder charges.[7] His speeches were recorded from prison and played at campaign meetings.[7]
The Indian National Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha had entered into alliance.[8]
Results
The Left Front won the election, entering into government for a fifth consecutive term.[3] Winning 203 out of 294 seats, the 1996 election represented the first major electoral set-back for the Left Front since its foundation.[9][10] The electoral losses were primarily felt in Calcutta and the industrial areas, and nine incumbent Left Front ministers failed to get re-elected.[9] All JD candidates finished in second place and RCPI lost its representation in the assembly.[10] However, in terms of votes the Left Front and the five JD candidates got 18,143,795 votes (49.3%).[11] Jyoti Basu's fifth Left Front government was sworn in, with 48 ministers representing all 13 districts of the state.[9]