One faction led by Pranab Mukherjee was in favour of forging an electoral understanding with the Left Front in the state in order to gain their support on the national level.

The other faction led by anti-Communist leaders like Siddharta Shankar Ray & Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi was stauchly opposed to it.

[4] Mukherjee played a decisive role in ensuring Mitra's victory in this election by having Banerjee's main supporter Ray sent out of the state as India's ambassador to the US at that time.

[5][6] The Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury contested the Nabagram seat from jail, being imprisoned on murder charges.

[9][10] The electoral losses were primarily felt in Calcutta and the industrial areas, and nine incumbent Left Front ministers failed to get re-elected.

Jyoti Basu, who had been re-elected as CM for a record 5th time, was offered the post of Prime Minister by both the Congress & the Janata Dal following the resignation of BJP's Atal Bihari Vajpayee within 13 days of assuming power due to lack of numbers in the Lok Sabha, lack of a consensual prime-ministerial candidate in the Congress & V. P. Singh refusing to become prime minister again.

However CPI(M)'s highest decision-making body refused this offer, believing that if it accepted Basu's prime-ministership, then due to lack of numbers in the Lok Sabha, it would have to bend to the will of the Congress, which it saw as a bourgeois organisation.

Thus being denied prime-ministership, Basu put forward the name of Janata Dal leader & Karnataka CM H. D. Deve Gowda as the prime-ministerial candidate, which was accepted by the Congress, Janata-Dal, Left Front & other parties allied with them.

Deve Gowda resigned after a year due to withdrawal of Congress' support & was succeeded by his Minister of External Affairs, Janata Dal leader Inder Kumar Gujral.