Calcutta, April 27: CPM state secretary Biman Bose today asked reporters not to raise questions on “old issues” Singur and Nandigram.

“I request you to not ask questions on what happened at the time of Lord Cornwallis and Lord Curzon. Don’t misuse journalistic freedom by harping on old issues,” Bose said at the state CPM headquarters.

The media, according to him, should focus on the unity in the Left Front before the polls and not try to drive a wedge between the allies.

HISTORY FOR COMRADE BOSE

Bose has reason to be worried after the old fissures in the front resurfaced last week when Forward Bloc veteran Ashok Ghosh criticised the state government for acquiring fertile farmland for Tata Motors in Singur and called its moves in Nandigram “anti-people”.

Ghosh did not stop at that and seemed to suggest chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had personally ordered the police firing in Nandigram on March 14, 2007.

The Opposition was quick to seize the opportunity and back Ghosh’s claims.

The 86-year-old Ghosh later issued a statement after speaking to Bose and Bhattacharjee and complained that a sec-tion of the media had “delibe-rately tried to rake up old differences in the front before the elections”.

Even before that controversy died down, the RSP’s Kshiti Goswami absolved Bhattacharjee from personal responsibility for the firing but put the CPM in the dock.

Echoing the Opposition, he alleged that “armed CPM groups” masquerading as policemen had joined the force during the March 14 operation that claimed 14 lives.

Today, Goswami, the PWD minister, was not present among the front leaders at the CPM office. RSP state secretary Debabrata Banerjee was and he said: “Whatever Goswami said was in tune with the stands of our party and the front as well as the version of the chief minister.”

There was no opportunity to seek a clarification.

The Bloc’s Ghosh declared that Left unity couldn’t be ruined by harping on what he and Goswami had said.

Fisheries minister and West Bengal Socialist Party leader Kiranmay Nanda accused the Trinamul Congress of provoking the firing and said the government should have taken a “bold step much earlier”.

Despite the apparent differences, the front constituents vowed not to let them become a poll plank again. The consen-sus was that the front had lost three zilla parishads and many gram panchayats to the Opposition since Nandigram be-cause of lack of unity.