Buddha to attend Politburo meet

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhdeb Bhattacharjee seems to have finally shed his inhibition of staying away from the Capital, reports Nagendar Sharma.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhdeb Bhattacharjee seems to have finally shed his inhibition of staying away from the Capital.

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Bhattacharjee, is likely to attend a meeting of the Communist Party of India’s (Marxist) highest decision-making body on Sunday.

The 65-year-old leader, who has stayed away from three of the four meetings of the party’s Politburo since a shocking defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in May, would attend the meeting, party sources said.

He is also expected to use this opportunity and meet the prime minister and home minister to talk about Naxal violence in the state.

Bhattacharjee, once considered the party’s posterboy, has been aloof since the Lok Sabha poll results were declared.

He is understood to be angry with the party’s central leadership, which has indirectly blamed his policies for the defeat in West Bengal.

Faced with the worst defeat in 32 years, the trend which looks irreversible till the assembly elections in 2011, he has advocated a purge of the corrupt cadres from the party.

Sources close to the chief minister said he was willing to rake blame for the party’s defeat in Bengal, but wanted the central leadership to explain the debacle in Kerala and other parts of the country.

“Why do our candidates in the entire Hindi belt and outside Bengal, Kerala, Tripura, Andhra and Tamil Nadu continue to lose security deposits?”, asked a party leader from the state.