It was an eventful year for the Left parties capping over four years of love-hate relationship with Congress-led United Progressive Alliance coalition with which they severed ties on the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The Left parties received a serious setback when their long-trusted ally, the Samajwadi Party, switched sides to back the UPA on the deal.
The confidence vote was sought by the UPA in Parliament after withdrawal of support by Left which also led to the Communist Party of India-Marxist expelling its veteran leader and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee from the party after he refused to quit the post saying the office he was holding was above politics.
The trust vote also saw realignment of 'non-Congress, non-BJP' forces, with the Left bloc taking the lead in roping in new allies like the BSP, TDP and AIADMK to forge an alternative at the national level by focussing on common issues.
Veteran Marxist Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who played a crucial role in bringing the UPA and Left together and who could have been able to garner broader support to form this alternative, breathed his last on August one.
The Left parties, which claimed to have blocked several key economic reform measures when they were supporting the government from outside, saw bills on some of these issues like increasing the Foreign Direct Investment cap in the insurance sector being brought to Parliament.
Making a foray into the Hindi heartland, the CPI-M for the first time won three seats in Rajasthan where its strength was only one earlier. The party attributed its victory to active involvement in local issues including the struggle of farmers in Sriganganagar and other parts.
In Tripura, the CPI-M-led Left Front bagged an overwhelming 49 out of 60 seats to form its sixth government.
The CPI-M, the major player among these parties, bore the brunt of attack from opposition Congress and Trinamool Congress in West Bengal as the Tatas pulled out their prestigious 'Nano' car project from Singur to Gujarat.
The party suffered rare electoral reverses in the panchayat polls in two districts in the state, a Left bastion for over three decades, but retained the rest of them. Trinamool Congress, which led the anti-farmland acquisition agitation in Nandigram and Singur, defeated CPI-M in South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore following large-scale violence.
While the infighting in CPI-M kept resurfacing in Kerala, the internal tussle in the Left Democratic Alliance coalition often dented the image of the government headed by V S Achuthanandan, who also landed in trouble for making unsavoury remarks against NSG commander Sandeep Unnikrishnan who was killed battling terrorists during the Mumbai terror attacks.
On the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left parties, after withdrawing support to the government, continued their tirade, saying the UPA had betrayed national interests by signing the accord, which not only had all conditionalities laid down by the Hyde Act but more provisions passed by the US Congress.
"It is a bad deal and an unequal treaty," as CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat summed it up as the parties organised nationwide protests against it.
The efforts of the Left leadership to form a non-Congress, anti-BJP alliance at the national level bore some fruit as Bahujan Samaj Party, Telugu Desam Party and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam responded to their appeals to coordinate at the national level on policy issues.
After holding a series of meetings with BSP supremo Mayawati, Karat and his CPI counterpart A B Bardhan held talks with AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa in Chennai. Both parties responded positively as TDP forged an electoral tie-up with the Left in Andhra Pradesh.
The top Left leadership maintained that closer to the general elections, efforts would be made to rope in more parties to leave the UPA and the National Democratic Alliance.
The Left claimed credit for the country not being affected by global meltdown saying its effort to block reform measures in insurance and banking sector actually helped.
The latest was the introduction of a bill in Parliament for increasing the FDI cap from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, a measure termed by the Left as a 'shameless' move at a time of global meltdown.
The Left was also vocal in demanding a reduction in the prices of petroleum products in the country in the wake of falling international crude prices.
The parties also raised questions about India conducting joint military exercises with the United States saying that it was giving a chance for the Americans to get a foothold in the region.
On the domestic front, the Left protested against attacks on minorities by saffron outfits and on north Indians in Maharashtra by Raj Thackeray-led MNS.
The bloc argued for stern action against Bajrang Dal and RSS for their alleged involvement in the violence against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka and other parts of the country.
As the Malegaon blast probe revealed the alleged role of right-wing Hindu elements, the Left parties demanded that terrorism should not be linked with religion and that stern action should be taken against those who perpetrate terrorism.
The parties attacked both the ruling UPA and the BJP for exploiting the terror issue for political gains.