After a crucial Front meeting at Alimuddin Street on Monday — where opposition to the nuke deal was further endorsed — Front chairman and CPM state secretary Biman Bose said the Congress had “suppressed facts” on the deal and deliberately “misled” its partner.

Bose further said the Congress was helping communal forces in the country, and had also failed to rein in price rise and inflation. He said an imminent countrywide campaign of the Left will talk about these “failures”.

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — at the 80th annual general meeting of the Indian Chamber of Commerce on Monday — sounded equally unyielding and went ahead to say that the overall performance of the UPA had been dismal. “If the UPA continues to rule, it will not be good for the people. I am sorry to say this,” Bhattacharjee said.

The chief minister touched upon inflation and said the state could not reduce prices as essential commodities have an all-India market. He also held the UPA responsible for farmer suicides, and said the waiver of farmer loans — in hindsight — had not been very beneficial.

“Only 27 per cent of farmers in the country, and 11 per cent in Bengal have taken loans from institutionalised credit sources. On the other hand, there have been 16,000 suicides,” Bhattacharjee said.

It is learnt the CPM will hold bipartite talks with Front partners to discuss the withdrawal of support. “We have spoken to the Left in Delhi and are also talking among ourselves. A Left coordination committee meeting is expected in Delhi on July 3 or 4, when everything will be clear,” Bose added.

Bose’s rhetoric made it evident that the Left would talk down the Congress on more popular issues such as communalism and price hike, considering the nuke deal has less appeal among the electorate. Bose said, “There have been several instances in recent years — in Gujarat, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh — when communal forces have struck, but the Congress did not hit the streets to check them.”

The Front meeting was also attended by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, RSP’s Debabrata Bandopadhyay and Kshiti Goswami, Forward Block’s Hafiz Alam Sairani, and the CPI’s Nandagopal Bhattacharjee and Manjukumar Majumder.

At the business meet, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee made clear his party’s stance on a few contentious state issues. He said no foreign company would be allowed to open a retail outlet in the state, though retail was necessary.

“However, we must modernise our marketing system. Every year, nearly 30 per cent of the vegetable produce rots because of poor facilities. The annual consumption of potato here is 60 lakh metric tonnes (MT), where as production this year was 85 lakh MT. The state must utilise excess production through retail, but we must move cautiously and keep all stakeholders in confidence,” he said.