New Delhi, July 20 (IANS) Senior Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leaders hope West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will attend the crucial two-day meeting of the party central committee commencing here Wednesday.
The meeting is intended to finalise the draft document for the extended central committee meeting, to be held in Vijayawada Aug 7-10.
‘He (Bhattacharjee) has not informed us that he is not coming for the meeting,’ said party politburo member M.K. Pandhe, to a question on Bhattacharjee’s attendance at the meeting.
The West Bengal chief minister had left the last politburo meet in a hurry.
Though the party leaders downplayed the issue, sources said the chief minister was angry after the supporters of party general secretary Prakash Karat criticised him for the Left Front’s pathetic show in the recently held civic polls even after the opposition Congress and the Trinamool Congress contested separately.
Bhattacharjee and a powerful wing in the CPI-M’s West Bengal unit have been cut up with Karat since the politburo decided to withdraw support to the Manmohan Singh government in 2008.
The chief minister strongly believes that Karat’s decision to cut all ties with the Congress over the India-US civil nuclear deal caused the Left’s rout in subsequent elections.
