Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has ensured that Land & Land Reforms Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah, who had often differed in public with him on land issues, does not get a berth in the new CPM state secretariat, a powerful body that controls the party as well as the Government.

Party sources said Bhattacharjee, by denying Mollah a berth in the 15-member secretariat, has signalled his intent to go ahead with his industrialisation agenda despite the rebuff from panchayat voters angered by farmland acquisitions.

The 83-member CPM state committee, which elects the secretariat, said in a statement on Monday that the Opposition had succeeded in creating confusion using the land acquisition issue.

“The state government's programme of industrialisation will continue. In issuesrelating to land, the government will proceed after consulting the people,” it said.

A senior CPM leader said Bhattacharjee, after analysing the way the Opposition had used the land acquisition issue, had concluded that it was Mollah's open disagreement right at the initial stages that had given a weapon to the Opposition and also led to discord between the CPM and its smaller partners in the Left Front.

While Bhattacharjee got his point across with Mollah, former chief minister Jyoti Basu managed to push through the induction of his 'disciple', Transport Minister Subhas Chakraborty.

Chakraborty, who had been another open critic of Bhattacharjee till recently, is a senior party leader but had not managed to get into any top-ranking organisational body, partly because of the way he regularly embarrasses the party with his unconventional acts.

Md Salim, a CPM member of Parliament who is also in the party's central committee, has been brought back into state politics by being inducted in the secretariat.

Salim, a close associate of the Chief Minister, had been a state minister but was moved out to Delhi in 2004 by Anil Biswas, the then state secretary.

Bhattacharjee expects Salim to woo back some of the Muslim vote antagonised by issues like land acquisition, the Justice Rajindar Sachar Committee's findings on the status of Muslims in the state and the Government's bungling of the Rizwanur Rehman death case.

The state secretariat's formation had been put off in view of the panchayat elections. During this period, the names of Mollah, Chakraborty and Rabin Deb had been doing the rounds as possible entrants in the secretariat.