West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will skip the two-day CPI(M) politburo meeting in New Delhi beginning tomorrow.
“I am not going. I am staying here,” he told reporters at the state secretariat here.
Bhattacharjee skipping the politburo meet follows the drubbing of the ruling Left Front in the civic elections at the hands of Trinamool Congress.
This is the second time Bhattacharya is skipping a politburo meeting after a poll debacle.
Earlier, he had skipped a politburo meeting after the Lok Sabha polls in 2009 where the Left suffered a huge blow in the state at the hands of TC and Congress combine.
Commerce and industry minister, Nirupam Sen, was also likely to stay away from the meet, which would analyse the results.
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Bhattacharjee came under fire in the party’s latest ‘rectification’ campaign. The party leadership felt that the chief minister’s neo-liberal policies and decry over the bandh culture had led to alienation from the people.
But party leaders in Bengal felt that withdrawal of support from the UPA I was one of the major reasons for Lok Sabha drubbing, as it facilitated the Congress alliance with Trinamool. And, it had a cascading effect.