The CPI(M) is likely to instruct general secretary Prakash Karat to go soft on the Congress at the Centre to weaken the growing Trinamool-Congress in West Bengal. A meeting of the party politburo will be held on May 18.

To put forward a more persuasive stand in favour of this demand, the Bengal brigade in the politburo — party state secretary and Left Front chairman Biman Bose, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and state industry and commerce minister Nirpuam Sen — has already started convincing some non-Bengal politburo members.

A senior central committee member said, while the Bengal brigade is confident that politburo members Sitaram Yechuri and Manik Sarkar (Tripura chief minister) will extend support, efforts are on to convince a couple of other politburo members to toe their line as well.

The Bengal-brigade may also line up Marxist Jyoti Basu to telephonically convince Karat of the Bengal logic.

Party sources also hinted that Basu could play a key role in convincing his friend and Union external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee to allow the Congress to settle a respectable and amicable treaty with the CPI(M).

It is learnt that during Yechuri’s recent visit to Kolkata, Bose, Bhattacharjee and Sen had discussed the issue with him. Bose went on to the extent of calling up Karat to convince him to undertake a softer stand towards the Congress.

The most vocal in this regard is the state transport and sports minister Subhash Chakrabarty who feels this stand is logical in the current scenario. According to him, the Congress is a “secular and anti-imperialist force” and hence there should be no reservations on going soft on them.

Although Bose has described Chakrabarty’s evaluation of the Congress ideology as his “personal opinion”, he himself is not totally disinclined to the idea of a logical post-results alliance with the Congress.

In fact, going against Karat’s categorical ruling out of a post-poll tie with the Congress, Bose again said such possibilities can come up for discussion only after the results are declared.

In fact, Bhattacharjee and Yechuri had also spoken along similar lines, indirectly expressing their openness for a post-poll alliance with the Congress.

In fact, political analysts too feel that a softer attitude towards the Congress is part of a logical thinking process for the CPI(M) to stop the growing Trinamool presence in West Bengal, considering that the state assembly elections are due in 2011.

If the Congress gets behind the Trinamool’s enemy line — the CPI(M), Mamata’s equations could indeed go haywire.

“A Congress-Left post-poll alliance logically means the end of the Congress-Trinamool honeymoon in West Bengal and re-aligning of the Trinamool-BJP bridge,” a senior political analyst here said.