He took over as the chief minister of West Bengal as the poster boy of an improved, forward-looking Communism, expected to lead the CPM and the state in a new direction. Ten years down the line, as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee heads towards another election, he doesn?t seem to be in control anymore.

Stung by repeated poll blows from the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and staring at the prospect of losing power after three decades, his allies started taking shots at the chief minister. Now, it?s the turn of Bhattacharjee?s own party. Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) member Tapan Hore?s outburst against the police department has taken even the Opposition by surprise. Hore accused the department, falling under one of the portfolios held by Bhattacharjee, of inertia and bias.

The killing of former CPM MLA Ananda Das at Nanoor in Birbhum district by alleged Trinamool supporters also saw Bhattacharjee squarely in the line of fire, even from his own partymen and Left Front constituents.

Outside the Assembly, a more serious indictment of the police department came from Bhattacharjee?s senior Cabinet colleague and party state secretariat member, Surya Kanta Mishra. Last week, at a CPM rally at Midnapore, Mishra, minister for health and family welfare, exhorted partymen to organise resistance against Opposition attacks instead of waiting for assistance from the police.

?When we were in a position of strength, had we called the police for help, they would have sprung to action. Now if we call them and they happen to be standing, they would rather sit down and disconnect the phone,? Mishra said.

One of the most glaring examples of the party losing its grip over the police was the recent transfer of IG, North Bengal, Kundan Lal Tamta, whom the Darjeeling unit of the CPM led by minister for urban development Ashok Bhattacharya had rooted for vehemently. In fact, the Darjeeling Left Front passed a resolution urging the government to retain Tamta. However, DGP Bhupinder Singh, who does not have very good relations with the IG and who was vehemently opposed to political intervention in routine matters like transfers, dug in his heels and Tamta had to go.

It was the rout in the Lok Sabha elections that gave the decisive push to the chorus against the government. The first person to stage an open revolt was minister for fisheries and Samajwadi Party leader Kiranmoy Nanda, who advised the government to resign. ?Since we have lost the mandate, the government should resign,? Nanda said.

While that did not come to pass, Bhattacharjee continued to be attacked over policies, particularly land acquisition, pursued by the Left Front government after the 2006 Assembly elections.

While ministers like Abdur Rezaq Mollah, in charge of land and land reforms, had long been bitter critics of Bhattacharjee?s land acquisition policy, now others have joined the ranks. A couple of days ago Assembly Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim, a CPM state committee member, indirectly criticised the CM for finding land for the Tatas at Singur for the small car manufacturing factory (an issue that later snowballed after protests by the Trinamool forced the Tatas to move out of the state). ?The government is not a middleman. Its job is not to find land for industrialists. All over India wherever a state government tried to do it, they got singed,? says Halim.

In another indirect attack on the Bhattacharjee-led party, he said that it was foolish of the government to flaunt the number of seats won by the Left Front in the 2006 elections. ?One should remember that in the 2006 Assembly elections, even though the Left Front got 235 seats and the Opposition 59, in essence the Marxists had just 1% edge over the Opposition.? While the vote share of the Left Front was 51%, the vote share of the combined Opposition was 49%.