New Delhi, June 5: CPM state secretary Biman Bose today discounted the possibility of immediate resignation by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee over the civic poll debacle but admitted that the party had failed to implement its rectification campaign “properly” in Bengal.

“The question does not arise. The matter has not been referred to the central committee. It has not been discussed in the state committee,” Bose said, replying to questions whether Bhattacharjee, who skipped the politburo meeting, will resign.

Bhattacharjee had offered to quit after the Lok Sabha poll setback last year. This time, although the CPM has been quoting statistics to claim some “improvement”, successive setbacks have prompted suggestions that the chief minister has lost the popular mandate for governance.

Bose submitted a preliminary report to the politburo on the reasons behind the Left Front’s civic poll defeat. Sources said that after the report was submitted, some politburo members expressed their views briefly and said the defeat was “very worrying” and required a detailed discussion.

It was decided that the matter would be taken up during the next politburo meeting on July 4-5 after the CPM state committee completes a detailed review of the reasons behind the defeat.

Asked why the Left had failed to show any significant improvement despite undertaking a rectification campaign, Bose said: “The campaign has not been implemented in letter and spirit so far. The effort is on. We have not been able to implement it properly.”

Bose sought to state that the failure to implement the rectification document prepared by the central leadership of the party could be one of the reasons for the Left’s “below-expectations” show in the municipal polls.

The CPM had started a rectification drive after the drubbing in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls to weed out “non-communist” trends among cadres and leaders with the aim to re-connect with the masses.

“We still have to work and establish connection with the masses,” Bose said. CPI general secretary A. B. Bardhan had said yesterday that the Left Front had got a bit “swollen-headed” and got “alienated from the people”.

Bose, however, refrained from reacting to Bardhan’s remarks. “I don’t comment over what other leaders have said.”

In public, most politburo members were evasive about the civic poll outcome, underling that it was not on the agenda. “There was a preliminary report on the municipal polls. The politburo decided to go into the review after the state committee reviews it. The main discussion is to prepare the outline for the resolution to be placed at the extended central committee in August in Vijayawada,” politburo member Sitaram Yechury said.

However, another politburo member, M.K. Pandhe, said: “There will be a preliminary discussion.”