Left leaders missing n-arsenal

Robbed of their clout, some Left Front leaders who roared in front of television cameras during the face-off with the Congress over the nuclear deal have quietly slunk away. Like All-India Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas, who mysteriously quit his Rajya Sabha seat barely five months after his re-election. “I am resigning to conform to the party policy of one-man, one-post,” Biswas said, referring to a 2006 party congress decision. A case of after-thought? Not the least. The Forward Bloc chief, in fact, sheepishly put in his papers after the central secretariat hauled him up for making another Upper House member, Barun Mukherjee, resign four years ahead of the completion of his tenure to gift the seat to the CPI. The apex party body firmly told him to opt for either the post of general secretary or the Rajya Sabha. He chose the party post. Now the central secretariat has decided to get the same Barun Mukherjee back to the Rajya Sabha.