The CPM-led Left Front’s worries seem to be well-founded. Nine of the 10 Assembly seats fall in the rural belt and it was evident during the Lok Sabha polls that a section of Left voters in the rural areas has swung to the Opposition camp.

Expecting a huge victory, Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee has asked her supporters not to be over-enthusiastic and refrain from holding victory processions. “People voted for us to work for them. You should keep that in mind,” Banerjee told a party gathering on Monday.

For both the ruling and Opposition camps, the bypoll results are important. While the Trinamool wants to see whether the anti-Left swing still exists, the CPM is trying to figure out if it has regained its lost ground.

But according to preliminary reviews, the mood in the ruling CPM, which had even roped in veteran Marxist and former chief minister Jyoti Basu to make an appeal to Congress supporters to vote for Left Front candidates, is far from upbeat.

Even after five months of the Lok Sabha polls, a primary review in the 10 Assembly constituencies conducted by the CPM reveals the voting pattern has not changed. The

Opposition votes are as consolidated at the grass-roots level as before. The star candidate for CPM in Belgachhia (East), Ramola Chakraborty, is lagging behind Trinamool Congress candidate Sujit Bose, according to an assessment done by the party earlier. The Left Front is apprehending defeat in nine of the 10 constituencies that went to the polls.

“We may win the Kalchini seat. If we can win the Rajgunj seat, we will be very lucky,” said senior CPM leader.

The results of 10 bypolls will have no impact on the Assembly but Banerjee will scale up her campaign against the ruling party and the Congress-Trinamool combine will obviously get a fresh impetus for the final push in 2011.

“Once we can establish that the CPM can be defeated anywhere, our unity will be strengthened,” said Partho Chatterjee, the Opposition leader. “The bypoll is an experiment for us whether we can work together at the grass-roots level,” said a leader.

Prior to the May 2009 Lok Sabha polls, in the rural polls in 2008, the workers from all the Opposition parties made an effective alliance at the village level, which battered the CPM across the state. Following the results in the rural polls, the leaders went into an active alliance with the Trinamool Congress resulting in the massive victory for the Trinamool.