West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will not attend the two-day meeting of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which begins in New Delhi on Saturday.
“I am not going. I am staying here,” Mr. Bhattacharjee said here on Friday, asked by journalists whether he would attend the meeting.
Questions have been raised whether Mr. Bhattacharjee's decision is in anyway linked to the future of the CPI(M)-led Left Front government after the front's poor showing in the recent elections to 81 civic bodies and the Trinamool Congress's demand that the Assembly polls, scheduled for 2011, be brought forward to this year.
The CPI(M) has rejected the demand and discounted speculation that the Chief Minister's decision might have something to do with the election outcome.
It is in view of the threats to law and order in the post-poll scenario that it has been decided that Mr. Bhattacharjee stay on in the city, Biman Bose, secretary of the CPI(M)'s State Committee, said before his leaving for the capital to attend the meeting.
Post-poll violence has already broken out at Labhpur in Birbhum district: three persons, said to be supporters of the CPI(M), were killed on Thursday when attacked by a group. The assailants were suspected to be Trinamool Congress activists.
Mr. Bose ruled out a review of the poll debacle at the Polit Bureau meeting; the matter could not be taken up till the assessment was completed at the State level.
Preliminary discussions on the document to be placed at the forthcoming extended meeting of the CPI(M)'s Central Committee and certain other technicalities would be taken up, he said.
Nirupam Sen, Industries Minister and Polit Bureau member, will not attend the meeting for personal reasons.
