National

Need to regroup Left Front:Basu

KOLKATA: Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu said here on Thursday that there was need for the ruling Left Front in West Bengal to make renewed efforts to regroup and there were lessons to be learnt from its failure to reach consensus on seat adjustments at certain places in the panchayat polls.

Referring to the violence in the Basanti area of South 24 Parganas district during the rural polls on Wednesday killing of four people, Mr. Basu said it was “very unfortunate.” “This is not right.”

Supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party — both major constituents of the Left Front — clashed at several places in an area where local leaders of both had failed to arrive at an understanding over seat adjustments for the rural polls.

Mr. Basu was speaking to newspersons during a book release event at his Salt Lake residence.

“Elections should be held in a peaceful atmosphere or else they have little meaning,” he said and regretted that despite several attempts to bring about amity, there remained some discord among certain Left Front constituents on the issue of seat adjustments for the rural polls.

“Such was the case in the last panchayat elections [in 2003] but this time it [the situation] is worse; we had realised that it would be so.”

All the constituents should look at resolving the differences within the Left Front. “I am speaking about my party [the CPI(M)] as well as the other parties,” Mr. Basu said.

Chairman of the Left Front Committee Biman Bose said the developments in Basanti were “unfortunate” and discussions to prevent a recurrence would be “definitely” held after the latest reports were made available.

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