Buddha not quitting politburo, says Karat

Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Prakash Karat on Monday presided over the crucial party's politburo meeting in New Delhi to review the party's dismal performance in West Bengal and a close miss in Kerala polls.

Speaking to mediapersons at the end of the four-and-a-half-hours meeting, Karat rubbished 'rumours' that former Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has offered to resign form the politburo owning up moral responsibility for the election debacle.

"He (Buddhadeb) has neither resigned, nor made an offer to do so," Karat said. "A newspaper in Bengal carried this news item and it seems the paper has more information than the party itself. This is not the first time Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has skipped an important meeting. He did not attend the meeting of the party after the Lok Sabha polls as well," he said with a smile.

During the meeting, CPI-M's top brass discussed the possible reasons behind this debacle and asked the state party units to send their reports in next three weeks. "The central committee of the party would meet on June 11 and 12 in Hyderabad to discuss the matter further," Karat added.

"We have accepted the verdict of the people. The people had made up their mind and voted for a change. We could not convince them to rethink. We should have won more seats as we lost a number of seats in West Bengal by narrow margins. We will have to find out reasons for that," he said.

Karat praised outgoing Kerala CM V S Achuthanandan for leading the party in the state. "There is nothing wrong in putting up posters highlighting his achievements. This does not amount to glorifying personality cult. We had posters of comrade Joyti Basu as well. We gave a tough fight and lost to United Democratic Front by three seats," Karat noted.

It must be recalled here that it was Karat himself who had struck off Achuthanandan's name from the list of the candidates, but CPI-M's Kerala unit did not heed to his advice.

Karat took a dig at those who had written off the epitaph of the Left parties. "We got 41 per cent of votes in Bengal. And we will bounce back and prove that those who have written the epitaph of Left parties were wrong. We are more concerned about attacks on our cadre. We would like to appeal to the Trinamool Congress leadership to honour its commitment and stop the attacks against CPI-M cadres," he said.

He also asked beleaguered Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa to resign from his post over allegations of corruption.