Senior CPM leaders on Thursday condemned the police lathicharge on the fasting students of Jadavpur University on June 10 and said it was now time to reconcile the matter.

From state transport minister Subhas Chakraborty to party MPs Samik Lahiri, Nilatpol Basu and Sujan Chakraborty, from CPM legislator Rabin Deb to SFI state committee leaders, all condemned the way the police had handled the situation.

They criticised the faculty of engineering and technology students? union (Fetsu) for its involvement in campus violence in 2003 which, they said, had built up to the present stalemate at the university.

Leaders of the SFI came down on Fetsu for ?exceeding limits? on the issue of the ?police atrocity? on June 10. They were addressing a convention organised by the party on the campus.

The sharp criticisms failed to make any impact on Fetsu and also the students at large, as a large number of them did not attend the convention.

Various circles feared on Thursday that the process of arriving at a solution to the two-month-long deadlock ? through talks between Fetsu and a five-member inquiry team of the university ? would suffer a setback after the SFI convention.

?We are hardly concerned with either the views of the SFI or those of the CPM because we have already attended several rounds of talks with the inquiry committee, and we are gradually moving towards a settlement of the dispute,? Amit Chakraborty, Fetsu general secretary, said.

?It is unfortunate that the SFI, as well as senior CPM leaders, are trying to aggravate the situation by making false allegations against the Fetsu,? he regretted.

Students hardly had any presence at the convention as the SFI controls the students? union of only one ? arts ? out of the three streams of the university.

In the evening, a delegation of five students? representatives from all the three streams ? engineering and technology, science and arts ? met Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who is also Jadavpur University?s chancellor, to inform him about the last few days? developments on the campus.

Immediately after the eviction of the fasting students on June 10, the chancellor had summoned vice-chancellor Ashoke Nath Basu and inquired about the incident.

?We have discussed the issues in detail with the chancellor. We expected a solution soon,? one of the students said after the meeting.

According to him, a meeting will be held on Saturday to discuss the outcome of Thursday?s parleys.