Buddhadeb skips politburo meeting

Bhattacharjee, who along with veteran leader Jyoti Basu had voiced their reservations over the Left decision to withdraw support to the UPA government over the Indo-US nuclear deal issue, is said to be upset over the party rout in the state.

For the record, politburo member and Left Front chairman Biman Bose described the reports on Bhattacharjee offering to step down as "rubbish".

"Bhattacharjee is not attending the meeting as he has informed the party that he cannot leave Kolkata due to the prevailing post-poll law and order situation," party sources said.

Besides Bose, those attending the meeting are CPIM general secretary Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, Nirupam Sen, Pinarayi Vijayan, M K Pandhe, S R Pillai and Chief Ministers of Kerala and Tripura, V S Achuthanandan and Manik Sarkar respectively.

The sources said the politburo would do "serious introspection" of the causes of their poll debacle, especially in their citadels of West Bengal and Kerala which face assembly elections in another two years.

The meeting took place amid reports that some of the senior leaders from West Bengal have raised questions over the leadership of Karat.

Karat is being squarely blamed for taking a stubborn stand on the nuclear deal issue and his "miscalculation" in pushing for a Third Front which, they feel, resulted in the dismal showing of the CPI-M and the Left Front which has seen its numbers dip from 59 in the outgoing Lok Sabha to 24.

While the CPI-M numbers have gone down from 43 to 16 in this election, the CPI has bagged four with two each by the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the All India Forward Bloc.

The factors responsible for the massive rout are likely to come up for discussion in the CPI(M) body, the most important among them being the "failure" of the party's political organisation in the two states, party sources said.

The other issues could range from land acquisition for industries, corruption and infighting to national issues like forging of alliance with parties which do not matter much in the two states, they said.