Bardhan now thinks N-power would’ve propelled Left tally

NEW DELHI: Ahead of a crucial meeting of the CPM central committee (CC) and polit bureau in the Capital this week to analyse the reasons for the Left Front���s drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls, its junior ally, CPI, has kept up the heat up on the CPM top-brass by squarely blaming the Marxists for the Left���s drubbing.

CPI national secretary, A B Bardhan, on Sunday targeted the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal for messing up land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur. He also put his counterpart in CPM, Prakash Karat, in tight spot by criticising Left Front���s decision to pull out of UPA government over the Indo-US nuclear deal. He said the policy of land acquisition and other state-specific factors had led to the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal.

The utterances are likely to fuel the anger against the CPM top-leadership, mainly Mr Karat and Mr Bhattacharjee, who are seen as responsible for the Left���s much diminished strength in the Lok Sabha. ���...the process of land acquisition was not right. The state government should know how to carry on the process of industrialisation in a Leftist way within the framework of the Constitution,��� Mr Bardhan said in Kolkata. He was addressing the press after a two-day state council of his party meeting.

Admitting that the Left Front government in the state had made ���some blunders���, Mr Bardhan, said his party had always believed that revival of the old and closed-down industries was equally important as opening up of new ones.

He also questioned the logic of withdrawing support to the UPA government when it was only a question of outside support.

Mr Karat, who was the principal actor in getting Left to part ways with the Congress-led UPA over the nuke deal, and his senior colleagues, including Mr Bhattacharjee, have already come in for considerable flak over the Left���s performance. In fact, initial rounds of introspection within the West Bengal and Kerala units have openly admitted to ���organisational weaknesses��� as well as the failure of the third front experiment.

Mr Karat, who has been shuttling between West Bengal, where the party���s state committee met, and Kerala, where he attended the birth centenary celebrations of Marxist stalwart EMS Namboodiripad, said on Sunday that the party leadership was ���not demoralised��� after the elections. However, former leader Somnath Chatterjee pointed out the disquiet within the party when he told a TV network that the CPM cadres were ���in a very bad shape��� and leadership had not been able to ���save the party���.

These rumblings are set to prefigure at the polit bureau and CC meeting this week when a weakened Prakash Karat also deals with the open rebellion in the Kerala unit of the party over the prosecution of Kerala state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

CPM���s popular chief minister V S Achuthanandan has refused to toe the party line on condemning the governor���s decision to allow Mr Vijayan, his arch rival who controls the organisation, to be prosecuted by the CBI. These tensions too are set to play out at this week���s meetings in the Capital.