And, when it does so, it will try to make amends for what Jyoti Basu called the party's ``historic blunder'' of not joining the United Front Government in June, 1996, and allowing him to be the first Communist Prime Minister of India.

In the aftermath of the great debate that arrayed Basu, general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet and their pro-government camp against the hardline no-government majority in the central committee, the issue became crucial for the commission set up to revise the party programme.

The debate over joining a Central government became of crucial importance for theparty because the 1964 programme did not have any guideline for such an eventuality. Clause 112 of the programme provided for the party joining a State government only if it had the numbers in the Assembly to effectively control it. The programme, adopted two years after the party was born following a split in the CPI, has never been amended. There were some minor additions to it at the Madurai congress of the party in 1972.

The party leadership is now convinced of two things. First, a revolution in India is a far cry, as Surjeet reportedly conceded in New Delhi yesterday. Secondly, the party will not muster enough numbers in the Lok Sabha in the foreseeable future to control a government at the Centre the way it can in the States.

``The programme commission has to consider a whole range of tactical issues, both international and national. Revising Clause 112 is only a small part of it,'' Politburo member Biman Basu told The Indian Express here.

``It'll take note, for example, of the fact thatmany communist parties which had changed course and even names after the fall of the Soviet Union are being reborn,'' he remarked.

The programme commission has five members -- Surjeet, Basu, P Ramachandran, Sitaram Yechuri and Anil Biswas, all Politburo members. Biswas, secretary of the party's West Bengal unit, confirmed that the commission would submit its report in December. It will then be discussed at the central committee. The ratification of the revised programme will come either at a plenum called specially for the purpose or at the next party congress. ``If necessary, the next congress (due by October, 2001 ) will be advanced for this purpose,'' Biswas said.

BJP flays `third front'
Hyderabad: BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday ridiculed the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s talk of forming a third front as an alternative to the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

Addressing a press conference here, Naidu said the idea of a third front ``smacked of theCPM's ``political bankruptcy and opportunism''.

UNITED NEWS OF INDIA