Held just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the by-elections are being considered a potent indicator of how political landscape would look after the next general elections.

The ruling CPM admitted that the huge margin of defeat - its candidate lost by over 30,000 - was also an indicator that the party is yet to reach out to its votebank whom it lost during the last panchayat elections.

“This was indeed unexpected. The margin of votes is more than we thought it would be. We are awaiting a report from our grassroots level to see what went wrong,” Binoy Konar, Central committee member of the CPM told The Indian Express.

On being questioned whether the party has failed to reach its rural votebank, he said, “This is true. It seems that our comrades have failed to penetrate the areas and reach out to the people. We were not successful in making the people understand.”

Sources in the party said that after losing ground in South 24 Parganas during panchayat polls, party workers made immense effort to recover the support of its votebank. Critical of the verdict, Konar said people of Bishnupur made a wrong choice by electing Trinamool’s candidate.

“People do drink poison too. People should have the consciousness to realise the situation,” he added.

But CPM’s top brass denied that the results will affect the party’s prospects in the Lok Sabha polls.

“By-election results have little impact because they do not decide which party will lose and which will win to form the next government. The by-elections will have no impact over the Lok Sabha polls. The Lok Sabha polls is about the entire state, about people choosing leaders to represent the state, who will do justice to their aspirations at the Centre,” said CPM state secretary Biman Bose.

“In the last Assembly elections we got 44 per cent of the total vote share. In the panchayat elections we did not do well there. And the by-elections results show that we are yet to recover the ground. This is my personal opinion,” he added.