Comrades can’t stomach Surjeet’s recipe for power

Several leaders in the Bengal CPI(M) unit shared Sen’s indignation at Surjeet’s manoeuvres. These leaders expressed their feelings at the just-concluded meeting of the party’s central committee in Delhi and, aided by fellow comrades from Kerala, forced the general secretary to beat a hasty retreat.

According to CPI(M) sources, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, who otherwise favoured the Surjeet line of an all-out effort to stall the BJP, kept a low profile at the central committee meeting, sensing the mood against it.

While declining to give away details of the debate at the meeting,central committee member Biman Bose today said that the committee had to accept the fact that there was no stopping the BJP this time. Surjeet’s announcement that the Left would vote against a BJP government was stating the obvious but nothing more.

“There would be dissensions within the party if we helped the Congress form a government or shared it with that party,” CPI(M) MP Tarit Topdar admitted. He, however, added that the party could not be neutral because that would mean indirectly helping the BJP in the “slender majority situation.”

But it would “not be easy to convince partymen about the support to the Congress,” Topdar told The Indian Express. His party and Lok Sabha colleague Rupchand Pal agreed: “It is only natural that the party rank and file would not accept this (support to Congress)”. Neither Topdar nor Pal ranks high in the party hierarchy. But their views reflect the general mood in the Bengal Marxists on the issue. And, CPI(M)’s partners in the ruling Left, especially theRSP and the Forward Bloc, feel equally strongly against closing ranks with the Congress against the BJP.

In fact, most Left leaders here feel relieved that Surjeet’s move came a cropper. “With both Congress and UF giving up attempts to form the government, we have been saved a huge embarrassment,” said a FB leader, adding, “Now we can concentrate on strategies to fight the BJP government with a clear conscience.”

At the moment, however, all major partners of the Left Front here are busy probing the poll results. “We’ve to probe why we could not correctly gauge the swing in favour of the Trinamool Congress-BJP combine,” said Biman Bose.

Although the LF retained 33 seats, the same as it had won in 1996, its total vote dropped by 1.3 million from that in the previous election. Overall, the LF was just 100,000 votes ahead of the combined vote share of the Congress, the Trinamool Congress and the BJP this time, having secured 47 per cent of the vote, against 46.16 per cent of the opposition.