“Biman Bose spoke like a CPM leader, not like a Left Front chairman,” said Ashok Ghosh, Bloc’s state secretary and a vocal critic of the CPM on issues like land acquisition at Nandigram and Singur.
Ghosh said that his party is contesting a total of 4,210 seats at the gram panchayat level or 10.14 per cent of the total seats, down from 11.59 per cent that it had contested in the 1978 panchayat polls when the Left Front was formed.
“How does Biman Bose’s statement stand up against these numbers?” he asked.
Sources in the Bloc said there is no unity within the Left Front in 17 districts where panchayat elections are being held.
“At the district level, the problem has not been resolved even after bipartite meetings with the CPM leaders,” Ghosh said, adding that he, however, would not blame the CPM for the disunity.
“It just did not happen,’ he added.
Meanwhile, sources in the CPM said that the Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) are backing Independents or the Trinamool Congress at many places, thereby creating problems for them.
“We have reports that the Bloc and the RSP have even joined hands with the Trinamool at many places to defeat the CPM candidate,” a senior CPM leader said.
Ghosh, however, said that he was not aware of such alliances.
“We are telling people to vote for other Left Front partners at places where the Bloc does not have a candidate,” Ghosh said.