The three smaller Left Front partners in West Bengal surprised its “big brother” once again on Tuesday by holding an impromptu meeting and sending out a message to the CPI(M) that it should not run the Government unilaterally. On Monday, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat had scolded the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) for criticising his party’s decision to welcome private capital. “What have you been doing in the Left Front for 30 years if you haven’t realised that the Left has to work within a capitalist system?” Karat had said. The Forward Bloc, which is leading the mini-Left Front, had met the RSP on Monday to discuss their complaints against the CPI(M). On Tuesday, it was scheduled to meet the CPI over similar issues.Following Karat’s stinging comment, the three parties on Wednesday decided to hold a joint meeting. After the meeting, Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh said no decision taken by a single party could be termed a decision of the Front. “We have not reached such a state that we have to follow the diktat of any single party,” said Ghosh.Source said RSP leader and state minister Kshiti Goswami, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the CPI(M) over issues like Nandigram, raised Karat’s comment at the meeting. “There is a legitimate ground for our criticism of the CPI(M),” Goswami is reported to have told his fellow leaders. “That the CPI(M) is helping capitalists is not a new thing. But Karat’s attack was not called for.”Ghosh, the seniormost Left Front leader after Jyoti Basu, told reporters that Left Front chairman Biman Bose must call a meeting to resolve the differences.
