New Delhi, Dec. 27: The subject of alliances in poll-bound Bengal is likely to crop up at the five-day CPM plenum that began in Calcutta today, although the prime agenda relates to organisational revival and mass re-connect

Led by party general secretary Sitaram Yechury, a lobby will explore the possibility of an electoral arrangement with the Congress in a bid to take on Trinamul.

This camp will be trying to exploit the window the Visakhapatnam party congress had left open in April this year while adopting the political-tactical line.

"While ruling out an all-India line of a national alliance with the secular-bourgeois parties and implementing the same uniformly in the states, the review states that the party can adopt suitable electoral tactics in the states for understanding with the regional parties," the political-tactical report says.

But the task will be difficult as the next line in the report curtails the party's elbowroom.

"But this (any state-level electoral tactics) should be done within the framework of the overall P-TL (political-tactical line) and it should be governed by the party's interests and the requirement of rallying the Left and democratic forces," it says.

In any case, the lobby seeking an understanding with the Congress is in a minority in the politburo.

Still, party sources said, Yechury and a sizeable section of the Bengal unit would try to persuade the party to agree to at least a tacit deal with the Congress in Bengal, if not an official one.

Yechury appeared to hint at this by underlining "flexible tactics" in a recent article on the plenum in party mouthpiece People's Democracy.

"At the same time, the 21st Congress P-TL also underlined the fact that the CPI(M) must adopt flexible tactics to meet swift changes in the political situation," Yechury wrote.

Many in the party feel that a challenge can be mounted against Mamata Banerjee only through "clever" electoral tactics. They see Mamata's recent friendly gestures to the Congress as an effort to pre-empt any CPM-Congress understanding.

The thrust of the plenum, however, will be on organisational matters.

"We are meeting in this plenum to strengthen our party organisation in the background of having noted in our party congress our persistent weaknesses in terms of stagnation if not decline in the strength of our party and mass organisation membership, its uneven composition and sharp decline in our party's electoral strength," Yechury wrote.

The CPM will discuss three study reports to try and coin slogans to connect with the people, especially the youth, in a changed world. The party feels that its current slogans fail to strike a chord with the masses.