Calcutta/Bolpur, Jan. 24: The RSP has decided to contest the panchayat polls with the CPM and not toe the Forward Bloc’s “independent” line.

The decision — in spite of the party’s stringent criticism of the CPM’s “right-wing deviations” — was prompted by the thinking that out of the Left Front, the RSP’s views would not carry much weight.

Unlike the Bloc, the RSP had never declared that it wanted to fight the elections alone. But with the two appearing to come closer on the Nandigram row, it had become a source of worry for the CPM, which has been grappling with the widening fissures in the front.

Today’s announcement, made by RSP state secretary Debabrata Banerjee and party veteran Kshiti Goswami, sent a wave of relief through Alimuddin Street.

Goswami, however, clarified that the move did not mean the party had softened its stand on the government’s industrial policy.

“The debates over the course of industrialisation will be put to test in the panchayat polls,” Goswami said at the inaugural rally of the party’s state conference in Bolpur. “But we won’t contest the polls alone as another partner has declared.”

The PWD minister, who had wanted to leave the government in protest at the CPM’s “armed recapture” of Nandigram, indicated that the majority of the party’s rank and file was not in favour of deserting the CPM.

“We will not leave the Left Front but continue to fight against the efforts to derail it from its professed tracks. Our party has realised that more people are listening to us and taking us seriously as we are lodging protests within the front,” he added, signalling that the RSP could not stand on its own without the coalition umbrella over its head.

Goswami admitted that the CPM was the “largest” Left party and it would not be possible to “strengthen the Left Front by weakening the Big Brother”.

However, he added, allies must be given the right to air their opposition in public.

Banerjee alleged that the CPM had been following the “right-wing, capitalist-wooing line” since the fag end of Jyoti Basu’s tenure at Writers’ Buildings.

“With Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at the helm of affairs, the party and the government are now unabashedly promoting capitalist development, which the Congress had done for decades,’’ he said.