For reasons unexplained, two Congress candidates from Mayureshwar and Nandanpur seats in Bengal failed to meet the Election Commission's criteria for qualifying as candidates. Following the rejection of their nomination papers, the fight was left between the CPM and Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress.

And from indications available, the Congress has decided to back the CPM and oppose its one-time member Mamata. This would have been considered in the realms of fiction a few years ago but is reality now. The Congress' high command backing of the CPM candidates is not exactly what the state PCC unit wants.

The fight in Bengal has to be with the CPM, given its predominance of Statepolitics for over 20 years. But here was a new twist to the old battle. However, the Congress and CPM coming together to fight the Trinamul-BJP alliance is also reflected in New Delhi.

For the first time in three decades, the Congress has asked a CPM leader, Jyoti Basu, to address the Nehru Memorial Lecture this year. To be delivered on Friday is the speech on ``India and the Challenges of the 21st Century'', a pet topic of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was keen to usher in the next millennium on a positive note in the country.

That Sonia Gandhi has entrusted such a dear topic to Basu is a clear indication of the detente between the two sides. Though the invitation was sent weeks ago, the lecture has taken on political overtones in light of the November 25 polls in four states, being seen as a mini general election.

The Nehru Memorial Lecture will be important as it will indicate the CPM's line on the Nehruvian policies and whether the party has done any rethink on their stance. Traditionally,the Left has held that Nehru's economic line was right and is probably so even now. The current issue of communalism is also one on which the Left and Nehru were together: no compromise on communalism.

The Congress went soft on the Right during P V Narasimha Rao's time as party president and prime minister, given his belief that L K Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee wouldn't let him down. All this changed after the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, leading Rao to deliver one of his finest speeches in Parliament when he flayed the BJP during the vote of confidence debate (Deve Gowda was PM).

But by then the damage was done and Rao was sacked by his party. Now, Sonia and Basu are overseeing a rapprochment of Congress-CPM ties which could form the basis of a broad anti-BJP polarisation of forces in the country.