The CPI(M) politburo’s members emerged tightlipped from their meeting here today, declining to reveal if the party’s spat with the UPA government on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal had figured in their five-hour-long deliberations.
Sources at the party’s Alimuddin Street state headquarters said the leaders are trying to work out a formula that would give them results without leading to the fall of the UPA government and mid-term elections.
This politburo meeting was held in Kolkata so that senior member Jyoti Basu can attend it. The 94-year-old leader has not been keeping well and has had to skip the last politburo meeting because it was held in Delhi.
It was after that meeting — the first after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s comment on the Left’s support to his government — that the politburo had told the UPA government not to “operationalise the deal” or face “dire consequences”.
The party’s Bengal leaders were not happy with this stand, pushed on the party by general secretary Prakash Karat, and have since gotten the Delhi leaders to tone down their utterances on the issue.
Karat, emerging in the evening from the politburo meeting’s second session, was tightlipped.
“Whatever we have discussed will be put before the CC,” he said, referring to the central committee, the highest policy-making body. “After the CC meeting, we will brief the media.”
MK Pandhe, another politburo member and president of the CITU, the party’s labour wing, said: “We discussed all relevant political issues.”
Basu, the man for whom the politburo meeting was held in Kolkata, declined to comment.
