These leaders went one step farther -- they wanted to include Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in a broad, anti-Left platform in the State.

Although resentment at the Pachmarhi overtures to the Left was brewing in the West Bengal Congress, its first public expression came on a day when Congress leader Sharad Pawar was here on a day's visit.

One of the principal organisers of today's Congress show, Pankaj Banerjee, took it on Pawar who attended a tea festival in the evening along with Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. ``He (Pawar) had no time to come here when Congressmen were being killed by Marxists. Now he comes to the tea festival to share the dais with Jyoti Basu,'' Banerjee told reporters in theAssembly House while Pawar was discussing the State's flood situation with party leaders and MLAs.

In a letter to Pawar, former PCC secretary Manas Bhuina urged the Congress high command not to take the help of the CPI(M) to form an alternative government at the Centre as this would ``sound the death knell of West Bengal Congress''.

Banerjee, who had been Trinamool Congress chairman until he returned to the Congress about three months ago, said that similar meetings of Congressmen would be held in the districts after the pujas. He also took strong exception to the recent meeting between Sonia Gandhi and CPI(M) general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet.

Among those who attended today's Congress show were former PCC president Somen Mitra, former PCC general secretary Pradip Bhattacharya, Sadhan Pande, MLA, and at least nine party councillors of the Calcutta municipal corporation. Interestingly, Mitra and Bhattacharyya were among the delegates to the Pachmarhi session from the State.

Mitra later arguedthat the State Congress had been fighting the CPI(M) for the past 22 years and there was no question of the party giving up that fight. He justified the resolution at the meeting, saying that even the Trinamool Congress was welcome to join the united fight against the CPI(M).

PCC working president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi sought to dismiss the anti-Pachmarhi meeting, ``Nothing much should be read into it. Such things happen in the Congress''.