Left Front partner RSP on Tuesday said that the CPI-M politburo’s indictment of the party’s Bengal brigade’s electoral tactics with Congress "clearly vindicated" the RSP’s apprehension about the failure of the "alliance" and suggested the CPI-M should punish the proponents of the alliance "if the party constitution has any such provision."

"Our party has taken note of the CPI-M politburo’s stern view of the Bengal unit’s decision to forge alliance with the Congress in violation of the party’s line and the Vizag Congress resolutions. If there is any provision in the CPI-M, the violators should be awarded punishment for not only harming CPI-M but the Left Front as a whole", RSP state secretary Kshiti Goswami said.

Accusing the Left Front chairman Biman Bose of not being able to deal with the alliance issue deftly, Mr Goswami said "in fact, he (Bose) preferred to adopt a middle path”.

"The hobnobbing of the CPI-M leaders with the Congress over the poll alliance and particularly the CPI-M state secretary Dr Suryakanta Mishra’s overture to the Congress leaders keeping in dark other LF constituents, was not only objectionable but highly insulting too",the RSP leader said.

He said that now with the politburo top brass having taken to task the Bengal unit by issuing its note of disapproval of the electoral tactics in Bengal, the state CPI-M unit has been feeling how the salt has been rubbed to its wounds. "CPI-M failed to read the people’s minds and its wrong political manoeuvre has cost the entire Left Front, paving the reentry of the right wing forces to rule the state”. he added.

The RSP leader slammed the LF chairman for not taking any step "even after we brought to his notice how the WBPCC president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury insulted us by stating that the alliance is between Congress and the CPI-M only”.

All-India Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas said that the view of the politburo and the central committee in a communist party was "binding on the entire party”. "Let us see what happens", he said when asked to comment on the CPI-M politburo’s view on the issue of the failed alliance tactics of the CPI-M Bengal unit.

CPI state secretary Probodh Panda said that the CPI-M politburo’s critical stand on the party’s electoral tactics in Bengal, corroborated the "confusion" generated in the minds of the voters about the future of the alliance before the assembly polls.

"It is now clear that there was a confusion about the alliance,and it has come true in the stand of the politburo", he said. However, former PCC chief Pradip Bhattacharya said the need of the hour was to instill confidence among the activists of both Congress and CPI-M facing post-election violence.

The existing state of affairs has made the Congress-Left alliance essential in the state, he felt. The CPI-M polirburo’s stand on the alliance, he said, was neither here nor there and it won’t create confidence among Congress and CPI-M activists who are struggling to resist postelection violence, he said.

“One cannot make out the actual stand of the CPI-M politburo which is emphasising the need for the Congress and the CPI-M to jointly tackle post-poll violence, yet it is criticising the party’s Bengal unit for joining an electoral alliance with the Congress,”the Rajya Sabha member pointed out.