Calcutta, Sept. 30: The CPM leadership, which had hoped to isolate Mamata Banerjee on Singur with the help of the Congress and the BJP, was shocked with today’s Congress “volte-face”.

“It’s unthinkable. The Congress today echoed the Trinamul Congress,’’ said secretariat member Madan Ghosh, who represented the CPM with Mridul De at the all-party meeting.

However, they still prefer to call it a “reflection of the Congress’s compulsions in state politics” than a fallout of the Left’s estrangement with the party over the nuclear deal.

“There may be a connection between the Mamata-Sonia meeting in Delhi with the Congress’s change of stand. But I think, it is more a reflection of the state Congress’s electoral game plan,” Ghosh said. He cited foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee’s opinion on the Tata Motors plant as reflection of the Congress central leadership’s mood. “Whatever may be our political differences, the CPM and the Congress have always agreed on the need for industrialisation. Pranabbabu has always favoured the project’s implementation and warned that a Tata pullout would be a big loss for Bengal,” the CPM leader said.

However, some other CPM leaders said that despite the Left’s good relations with Mukherjee, the continued spats between the CPM top guns and the Congress at the Centre would influence Sonia Gandhi decisions in the run-up to the general elections.