This is the second time Bhattacharjee is skipping a politburo meeting in two months after the announcement of the Lok Sabha election results.
It is learnt that the unprecedented defeat in West Bengal in three decades has created a rift between Bhattacharjee and party general secretary Prakash Karat.
While Karat blamed the state leadership for going on an industrialisation overdrive, state leaders pointed fingers at Karat’s policies like withdrawing support to the UPA government on the Indo-US nuclear deal, sacking Somnath Chatterjee from the party and hobnobbing with BSP leader Mayawati.
Mark of protest
Bhattacharjee’s continued absence from the politburo meeting indicates a mark of protest by an influential section of Bengal leaders against Karat and his comrades. However, the party said Bhattacharjee could not attend the meeting due to ill-health.
Before the formal politburo meeting on Saturday, Karat had a long discussion with Bengal state secretary Biman Bose on the industrialisation plan and the steps to be taken to rectify the mistakes in order to bring the cadres closer to the masses before the assembly polls.
The politburo once again adopted one of its oldest documents on rectification with the objective of screening out the “bad elements” from the party so that the ordinary people can relate more to the party workers. The chasm between the mass and party workers was one of the factors behind the near routing of the Left front in Bengal.
Meanwhile, in the wake of a string of controversies on land acquisition, Karat has asked Bose and state industry minister Nirupam Sen to virtually put an end to all industry projects till 2011.
The latest trigger comes from the raging controversy on a resort near eastern Kolkata where two state ministers and a Trinamool leader is believed to have been involved in illegally procuring land from the farmers.
While there were not much discussions on the Kerala front in the absence of state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, the politburo debated on the possibility of creating a Third Front in Maharashtra assembly election with support from 17 other parties.
