After standoff with CPM,RSP buckles for seats

Sources said the RSP’s about-turn is born of delimitation fears after which the party will not find a place in the LF’s list of candidates for Kolkata since both the Assembly seats in the city — Burtolla and Dhakuria — that it used to contest stand abolished.

Secondly,in the nine civic bodies where RSP leaders occupy the post of vice chairman with CPM’s backing are at stake in the wave of change sweeping across the state.

Not surprisingly,RSP’s Kshiti Goswami,the state PWD minister who has had a continuous war of words with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacahrjee,is now leading the efforts for a rapprochement with the CPM reportedly in his search for a new seat since his constituency of Dhakuria would be abolished.

“He wants a new constituency in and around Kolkata for which the CPM can help him,” said an RSP leader. Goswami too sounded in a mood of truce. “We have to contest elections jointly,be it civic polls or state Assembly elections,” he said.

Sources said Goswami told the leaders at the party meet today that the CPM might offer him a constituency in Purulia or West Midnapore if his party did not mend fences with it.

“It would be impossible for me to contest from a remote area. We would take up the issue with the CPM and request them to consider a constituency in and around Kolkata,” Goswami reportedly said at the meeting.

Meanwhile,the RSP has decided to induct Dasarath Tirkey as the minister of state for PWD,a post which has been lying vacant since Monohar Tirkey was elected to the Lok Sabha in May 2009.