Sept. 30: The Congress today said ancillary units should be relocated from the Nano site, shedding its ambiguity on Singur and leaving room for manoeuvre in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress’s demand for shifting the units was disclosed by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings after an “all-party” meeting boycotted by the principal Opposition group.

“I find a reflection of the Trinamul Congress” in the Congress stand, the chief minister said on a day Mamata Banerjee met Sonia Gandhi in Delhi.

The confluence of circumstances — the Congress’s demand that could kill the Singur project if conceded and Mamata’s meeting with the UPA chief — fuelled speculation that the party was playing with an eye on the approaching polls.

The Congress is said to be keeping two factors in mind: how to ensure that its political space in Bengal is not eaten up by Trinamul and how to avoid antagonising Mamata to such an extent that a future understanding is not possible. In the process, if the Left — yet to be forgiven by Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi for the pullout over the nuclear deal — suffers a few anxious moments, the Congress will not lose sleep, sources said.

Mamata has been repeatedly dubbing the Congress the CPM’s “B team”. The Congress could not respond to the taunt convincingly for several reasons, one of which was the ambivalent stand on Singur.

Till recently, the Congress, especially state unit president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, had been supporting the project though with qualifications.

The party had also mulled disciplinary action against Subrata Mukherjee for parti-cipating in a Mamata rally in Singur.

However, on Sunday, Das Munshi had picked out the Tatas for mild criticism for “threatening” to pull out. The party still officially supports the project but its demand for relocation of ancillaries is a killer condition identical to that of Trinamul.

The chief minister suggested as much while making public the Congress’s stand at the meeting. “It is unfortunate that the Congress has failed to understand the nature of the project. We don’t think the ancillaries can be relocated as that would affect the viability of the project.”

Mukherjee refused to accept that the Congress had changed its stand. “We are only ta- lking of shifting the ancillaries. That will, at the most, raise the Nano’s price. What’s the big deal if the Tatas increase the car’s price by Rs 10,000?”

Congress sources conceded that Mamata’s accusations that the Bengal unit was a “dalal (broker)” engaged by the CPM and the Tatas to break a “farmers’ movement” could not be ignored. “Some damage control” had to be done, said a Congress leader.

For Das Munshi, another compulsion is Sonia Gandhi, who has opposed Mayavati’s land acquisition plan in Uttar Pradesh.

At the meeting with Sonia, the Trinamul chief apparently asked the Centre to intervene “decisively” in Bengal. So-nia apparently heard her out but Congress sources later said they saw no possibility of the demand being accepted.

Asked if anything other than Singur cropped up, Trinamul sources said: “If two important leaders are face-to-face before an election, obviously other matters will come up.”

The Congress feels that the CPM would not do well in the Lok Sabha elections in Bengal and Kerala. Coupled with that, an understanding with Mamata should help the Congress neutralise the loss of the CPM as an outside supporter, according to the leadership.

However, Congress lead-ers said “little else” was discussed.