Chandigarh, Sept. 21 -- When the Communist Party of India (CPI) gathers in Punjab for its national congress starting Sunday, the irony will be hard to miss - the Left, once a force to reckon with in the state politics has today been reduced to a near non-existent presence. Both CPI and CPI (Marxist) have seen their support base shrink in a state once regarded as a nursery of comrades. This even as the state saw the emergence of big names such as Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjit Singh and Satpal Dang in the past few decades. It has been over 23 years since any Left party last won an assembly seat in Punjab. In 2002, CPI had managed to secure two reserved seats - Malout, represented by Nathu Ram, and Pakka Kalan (now Bathinda rural), represented by Gurjant Singh Kuttiwal when the party had forged an alliance with the Congress. The last time that the Left found electoral success in parliamentary politics in the state was in 1999 when Bhan Singh Bhaura won the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat, again as a Congress ally. All three victories had come from constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes, indicating the limited appeal of the communist movement even then. In 2012, Left parties made desperate attempts to revive its fortunes by forging an alliance with former finance minister Manpreet Badal's People's Party of Punjab (PPP) but failed. Political thinkers believe the Left was eclipsed by the rise of regional forces such as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), as well as the continued presence of the Congress. Many leaders in the present-day Congress and AAP are those who were active supporters of the communist party in their youth. From the 1950s through the 1980s, communist parties played a central role in mobilising farmers, agricultural labourers, and industrial workers across the state. "The biggest loss the left saw was during the militancy era, post 1984, when most of its leaders were killed by militants," said senior journalist Bakhtaur Dhillon, who had been associated with the CPI during his student years in Bathinda. Comrade Hardev Arshi, a two-time CPI MLA, said, "The slide began in the sixties after the Left did not react to the emerging situations (in the aftermath of the 1962 China war) on the socio-economic front."...