July 17: The CPM has not included the Speaker in the list of MPs who have been issued a whip to vote against the government but that does not mean the party has abandoned attempts to persuade Somnath Chatterjee to relinquish the Chair.

The three-line whip, sent through text message, asked the party’s Lok Sabha MPs to reach Delhi by July 20, attend Parliament the next two days and vote against the government’s trust motion.

By excluding Chatterjee from the whip for the “time being”, the party has implicitly accepted that it should not have included his name in the list of Left MPs furnished to the President as long as he remained Speaker.

“According to parliamentary norms, as long as he is the Speaker, he is above the party whip. But once he resigns and comes to the floor, he will be under the whip,’’ said the chief whip of the CPM parliamentary party, Rupchand Pal.

This is precisely why Chatterjee has been refusing to step down, at least before the trust vote. Resignation as Speaker will bring him under the whip and force him to vote against the government along with the BJP, which he has been resisting.

Sources said CPM leader Prakash Karat had called Chatterjee before the Speaker left Hyderabad this afternoon after medical tests.

Bengal CPM secretary Biman Bose is learnt to have told party leaders from North 24-Parganas that Karat would speak to Chatterjee to iron out the differences. It was not clear whether Bose was referring to Karat’s unconfirmed call to Hyderabad or a fresh initiative.

Along with the Karat talks offer, came the hint of stick. Bose said: “I must point out that he (Chatterjee) fought the polls not as an Independent candidate but on our party symbol and went to the Lok Sabha as the CPM MP. It’s true that he was later elected unanimously as Speaker and earned accolades for being impartial. But other parties didn’t withdraw their candidates when he was in the fray for the Lok Sabha.’’

Perhaps keeping in mind the sympathetic stand of sections of the Bengal unit towards Chatterjee, Bose conceded that the leadership should have spoken to the Speaker before putting his name on the list to the President.

If Karat’s mission fails — as it did earlier in Delhi — the central committee, meeting in Delhi on July 19 and 20, is expected to mount pressure on Chatterjee. “We will discuss the voting and related issues,’’ Bose said.

Bose met Jyoti Basu this evening but the patriarch is believed to have given up his effort to mediate on the Chatterjee issue.

Subhas regret

Subhas Chakraborty, who had supported Chatterjee and opposed voting with the BJP, today sent a letter of regret to the party for speaking “outside the party”.

“Subhas explained his position and said he had made a mistake by speaking outside the party,’’ Bose said. The letter came on the eve of a party meeting where Chakraborty is likely to be censured.