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Key India State  January 14, 1985|RONE TEMPEST | Times Staff
Writer  CALCUTTA — Obscured by all the hoopla surrounding last
month's landslide election victory of India's Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress-I Party was a major reversal for
the Communists who control state govenment here in West Bengal.
For nearly a decade, leftist front parties, dominated by the
Communist Party of India-Marxist, have controlled all levels of
government in Calcutta and in the surrounding state of West
Bengal, which has a population of 58 million.  In the 1980
national election, the party--one of India's three Communist
parties--sent 28 members to Parliament from West Bengal,
compared to only four for the nationally dominant Congress-I.
One of 'Red Forts' Like the state of Kerala to the southwest,
which voted the Communists into power in 1957, West Bengal has
been known as one of the "red forts" of Indian politics.  In
1971, West Bengal's leftists stopped