"If industrialisation advances in Bengal under the Left Front government, then the raison d'etre of the opposition's political existence will simply cease to exist," party Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said.

Hence, ‘for their political survival’, he said, the opposition parties needed to prevent industrialisation in the state and "to sabotage greater employment opportunities and better livelihood for the people".

"They, thus, emerge as the enemies of Bengal's prosperity," Yechury said in an editorial in CPM’s organ People's Democracy.

He said the same political forces had "violently opposed" land reforms brought about by the Left Front after it came to power in 1977 and had "openly sided with the landlords protecting their illegal possession of vast amounts of land above the legal ceiling".

Maintaining that West Bengal government had distributed more land to the landless than any other state in the country, the CPM leader said, "While its population is only eight per cent of that of India's, 22 per cent of all land distributed in the country is in West Bengal.”