KOLKATA: The Indian state of West Bengal said goodbye on Friday to three decades of uninterrupted rule by the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist government.
Early results from state polls made it clear that the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M, had been swept aside in a landslide that marks the end of an era in India's modern politics.
The victor was the Trinamool Congress Party of firebrand Mamata Banerjee, the largest ally of the Congress Party in the federal ruling coalition.
"It's a profoundly important moment for the people of the state who had an intense desire for change," said political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Roychowdhury as Trinamool supporters celebrated in cities across West Bengal.
With counting still underway, Trinamool and its allies were leading in 186 of the state assembly's 294 seats, with the Marxists ahead in just 68.
If the final result reflects the same margin, it would effectively consign the once-powerful CPI-M to the political wilderness.
Banerjee, a populist who casts herself as a champion of the poor, has ridden a wave of popular discontent with the Communist government's handling of the economy that has left industry in decline and the state neck-deep in debt.
Cheering, dancing crowds gathered on Friday outside her modest, one-storey home beside a canal in the state capital Kolkata.
"After 30 years it is like a revolution, a new chapter in the history of West Bengal has begun today," said 34-year-old Nandita Deb, a history professor in Kolkata.
Dhiren Chottopadhyay, a jute trader in Kolkata, compared Banerjee with Kali the Hindu goddess of time and change.
"She fought and fought for years, never gave up and today she will be smiling the most," he said
The Left Front had, until recently, won every election in West Bengal since 1977.
But straight successive losses in council, parliamentary and municipal polls have left the communists struggling for survival.
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