Calcutta, Nov. 3: CPM state secretary Biman Bose today endorsed Jyoti Basu’s “special request” to Congress supporters to vote for the Left to defeat Congress ally Trinamul, indicating a possible rethink in the party about its relationship with the erstwhile partner.

“The party didn’t oppose what Jyotibabu had said,” Bose said when asked this afternoon whether the CPM supported Basu’s Sunday “appeal” to voters, particularly those of the Congress, to ward off the “terrible danger” posed by the “Trinamul-Maoist nexus”.

Unlike Basu’s earlier appeals that had urged Left activists to win back those who had voted for the Opposition, the latest addressed Congress supporters directly and urged them to reciprocate the Left’s support to the UPA in 2004.

That Basu didn’t make a similar call to Trinamul supporters “in the interest of peace, democracy and development of the state” made his political message loud.

For many in the Bengal CPM and the Left Front, it not only underlined the beleaguered party’s desperate efforts to drive the wedge harder in the Opposition alliance before the Assembly polls of 2011 but also indicated a rethink on its relations with the “lesser evil”, the Congress.

Bose today made it clear that Basu did not speak for himself but the Bengal party leadership.

“We do make a distinction between the Congress and the Trinamul Congress. The Congress has a declared programme and policies and it is clear whose interests it serves. But Trinamul has no such programme or policy. Its rhetoric confuses people. The party is killing the poor while paying lip service to their interests. Here lies the basic difference (between the Congress and Trinamul),’’ he said.

Although the party had made Basu’s “appeal” available to the media, CPM central and state leaders had feigned till yesterday that the nonagenarian leader, almost bedridden because of age, had issued it on his own and only out of his concerns for the state as a “senior statesman”.

However, Bose’s comments made it clear that Basu’s appeal was the brainchild of the state CPM leadership, which apparently used the patriarch’s authority and charisma to pre-empt any opposition to such a move from party general secretary Prakash Karat and anti-Congress front partners.

The CPI, Forward Bloc and the RSP are apparently not happy with Basu’s appeal as they refuse to make a difference between the Congress and its offshoot Trinamul. They fear the move will confuse the Left’s rank and file.

Bose blamed Trinamul for the violence in Birbhum’s Nanoor and Hooghly’s Khanakul. “Trinamul is hell bent on destroying peace and democracy in Bengal,” he said.

Reacting to Mamata Banerjee’s charge that the CPM had killed its Nandigram panchayat leader Nishikanata Mondal, he said: “She is harping on the same lie even after Maoists have themselves admitted killing him. She is doing it to conceal her nexus with the Maoists.”