Furniture burn on Tuesday after the CPM’s Lalgarh local committee office was ransacked. (Sanat Kumar Sinha)

Calcutta, June 16: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his party will try their best to get Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress by their side at a time Maoists are expanding their “liberated zone” and Mamata Banerjee her political turf.

In addition to placing the state’s request for central paramilitary to contain primarily the Maoist advance, Bhattacharjee’s June 19-21 Delhi mission includes meetings with Singh, home minister P. Chidambaram and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, also the state Congress president.

Caught between the fear of repeating the bloodshed of Nandigram and snowballing dissent in the ranks against the government’s hands-off policy, the secretariat decided to act tough but not to speak about it before Bhattacharjee gets the Centre’s support.

“Whatever may have been our relations with the Congress during the elections, we want Centre-state co-ordination to tackle the Maoists. Not only administrative help, we want the Prime Minister and his party to take a clear political position against the Trinamul Congress’s move to destroy Bengal’s democratic atmosphere,” said CPM state secretariat member Raghunath Kushari.

State party secretary Biman Bose had expressed a similar sentiment and even lauded Singh.

The powerful state secretariat met for three hours today to take stock of the spiralling post-poll violence and figure out how to deal with it.

After the meeting, a grim-faced Bhattacharjee and the rest left without explaining what they were planning to do.

A leader accused “Trinamul, Maoists and others” of la- unching a “fascist-like terror campaign”.

Although the party referred to Trinamul “as a partner in the Centre” and blamed its ministers and MPs for spearheading the attacks on the Left, there was no complaint against the Congress and the central government led by it.

At a time the politburo and central committee are to review the decision to withdraw support to the UPA, the CPM’s success in containing the Maoists and the state’s principal Opposition party depends heavily on how the Centre and the Congress react to its Delhi mission.

“We have considered both the positive and negative aspects of strong action and its political costs. The government has been asked to go for strong administrative measures. But much will depend on the Centre’s attitude,” a secretariat member said. This explains why there was no mention of tough measures or the Centre’s responsibility in the party statement released today.

According to secretariat members, the chief minister will submit a report to Singh and Chidambaram on the Lalgarh situation and ask for a “Centre-state joint command in operations” in collaboration with Jharkhand, also bleeding from Maoist violence.

Although some MLAs asked for army deployment in Lalgarh, the secretariat ruled it out for the moment. The chief minister himself apparently cautioned against any “hasty” operation in view of the presence of “highly trained and heavily armed Maoists”.

Referring to the “violent campaign by Trinamul Congress ministers, MPs and leaders”, the secretariat urged the “state’s people to organise pratibad-pratirodh (protest and resistance)”.

The call indicates the leadership’s approval of a hitback as in Burdwan’s Mangolkot. There, party supporters last night ransacked and torched houses belonging to Opposition workers following the murder of a CPM district committee member.

“The resistance will differ according to the situation, from district to district. We can’t expect our supporters to die without trying to defend themselves,’’ said a secretariat member in a tone that contrasted with the chief minister’s plea to MLAs yesterday not to fall into the Opposition’s trap.

The Left Front will discuss the violence tomorrow.