Calcutta, Oct. 3: The Forward Bloc today claimed the chief minister had agreed to bind Metro Cash & Carry to a minimum bill of Rs 5,000 per item per customer, but the CPM said the sum hadn’t been fixed.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will decide the amount at a meeting with Metro representatives, to be attended by officials from the Bloc-run agri-marketing board, a CPM leader said.

The two Left allies met today to work out the conditions the German wholesaler will be set in exchange for a promised licence from the agri-marketing board on October 10.

Bhattacharjee had forced a reluctant board to agree to issue the licence, following which the Bloc said Metro would be set certain conditions to prevent it from doing sneak retail and gobbling up the small trader’s business.

Sources said the Bloc first proposed a minimum overall sale of Rs 30,000 per customer — a climb-down from its reported plans for a figure between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh.

Bhattacharjee said it would be unrealistic to expect a Metro customer to buy and preserve perishable items like meat worth Rs 30,000. He proposed a minimum bill for every individual item sold to a customer, rather than a minimum combined bill. “We agreed and proposed an amount of Rs 5,000. Neither the chief minister nor the other CPM leaders objected to it,” said Barun Mukherjee of the Bloc.

CPM state secretariat member Madan Ghosh, who was at the meeting, said the allies “agreed in principle on conditions”. “But the minimum amount for single and multi-item sales was left to the chief minister, board chairman Naren Chatterjee and government officials who would decide after talks with Metro officials.”