Calcutta, Jan. 8: The state government and the CPM today embraced an offer made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, agreeing to hold long-distance consultations with AIIMS on Jyoti Basu’s condition.

The consultations — initially planned over video but converted into a teleconference after a link failure that prompted a venue shift — were held by doctors of the private hospital where Basu is admitted but the green light was given by the state government.

Yesterday, while visiting AMRI in Salt Lake, the Prime Minister had said he could arrange specialists but Basu’s medical board had decided against a request for the time being.

Sources in Writers’ Buildings said the Prime Minister’s Office got in touch with the chief minister’s secretariat and suggested the videoconference.

“A PMO official told us that they would ask experts from AIIMS to interact with AMRI doctors through videoconferencing at 5.30pm today,” said an official of the chief minister’s secretariat.

Subesh Das, the chief minister’s principal secretary, called up the official in Delhi and thanked him for the PMO’s intervention.

But the videoconference could not take place because of connectivity glitches. The venue was shifted to Emami Towers, off EM Bypass, around 10km from the hospital, where the doctors had to rush as their AIIMS counterparts were waiting in Delhi and the teleconference was held.

For once, the CPM is not complaining about central intervention. Rather, the party is playing up Singh’s role in an attempt to rile Mamata Banerjee who was neither at the airport nor at the hospital yesterday, apparently because of a railway event.

Today, the CPM mouthpiece carried a photograph and report on the Prime Minister’s visit on the front page, leaving an inside page for party general secretary Prakash Karat, who also visited the hospital.

Unwittingly or otherwise, people were also reminded today of the Karat-supported “historic blunder” that denied Basu prime ministership when Deve Gowda made an indirect reference (see Metro). Basu had also opposed the withdrawal of support to Singh’s first UPA.

CPM state secretary Biman Bose also underscored the point that the videoconference was taken up following the Prime Minister’s offer.

Now some party leaders are hoping that Sonia Gandhi will visit Basu. “We have heard she is coming. But we don’t know when,’’ said a CPM state secretariat member.