Chatterjee (top) and Chowdhury

Calcutta, May 10: CPM state secretariat member Shyamal Chakraborty today made it clear that the party’s Bengal unit wanted Somnath Chatterjee and Saifuddin Chowdhury back in the fold, though Prakash Karat may be reluctant.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had told STAR Ananda yesterday about how he missed Chatterjee and his good relations with Chowdhury. He also said he would try “in my own way” to bring them back.

Chakraborty said: “I’m not a politburo member. So I don’t know whether he (Bhattacharjee) had a talk with the central leadership on this. But I will be happy if they come back, yes, both of them.”

Bhattacharjee met Karat at the state party headquarters this afternoon. For the party general secretary, busy gearing up for post-poll number-crunching, the ousted duo appeared a non-issue. “I think, (you) do the election,’’ Karat said, waving his hand dismissively before leaving for rallies in North 24-Parganas.

He remained mum on whether there was any possibility of their re-induction after the polls.

However, Chakraborty was loud in airing the wishes of the Bengal unit, though he made a distinction between Chowdhury and Chatterjee.

Chatterjee was expelled last year after he refused to step down as Lok Sabha Speaker when the Left parties withdrew support to the UPA government over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Chowdhury, a former MP, had an “honourable divorce” with the party in 2000 over disputes on policies. He la- ter floated the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) and became close to Mamata Banerjee until parting ways over her refusal to share seats.

“Somnathda never joined any other party... we have great respect for him,” said Chakraborty, also a party central committee member.

Reminded about the diffe-rences with Chatterjee on the nuclear deal, Chakraborty dismissed them as trivial. “A dif- ference of opinion on one or two issues hardly matters.”

Sources said the majority of the Bengal leaders had half-heartedly supported Karat’s “nuclear war” against Manmohan Singh and did not find it a saleable plank during campaigning in Bengal.

Chatterjee “misses” the party but is reluctant to petition the leadership for a reunion.

Chowdhury is now contesting the Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat on his party’s symbol, a candle.

Mamata believes he is the CPM’s “dummy candidate”, fielded to cut into her votes, but Chakraborty tried to argue that Chowdhury’s candidature would stand in the way of his possible re-entry into the party. “Safi is contesting against the CPM, his mission is to defeat our party. I don’t know why. I don’t think he can be taken back immediately,” Chakraborty said.

Denying Mamata’s charge, he added: “Safi is contesting as a PDS candidate. If we had planned to put him up as our dummy to divide Muslim votes, we would have fielded him in constituencies where Muslims have a greater presence.”

At a rally in South 24-Parganas’ Baruipur this evening, Chowdhury welcomed the chief minister’s efforts to bring him back into the party.

“I welcome Buddhada’s efforts. I’m happy to learn that he is trying in his own way so I can return to the party. But this does not depend on a person’s individual decision. The party has to take a policy decision,” he said.

He denied receiving “feelers from the party about my going back in all the nine years since I quit the CPM”.