Bhattacharjee and Singh

May 10: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee called up the Prime Minister last night and said he had not “meant any disrespect” to him, a source close to Manmohan Singh said today.

The Bengal chief minister apparently said he was “misquoted” by the media, which reported a speech in which he accused Singh of “failing to perform on all fronts”.

According to the source, the Prime Minister replied: “It is okay because these things happen in politics.”

Subesh Das, principal secretary to the Bengal chief minister, however, said: “As far as I am aware, the chief minister made no calls to the Prime Minister. At least no calls were routed through me.”

He added: “But the chief minister could always have called up the Prime Minister directly and I would not get to know of it. Or he could even have called him from the party office.”

Asked to comment on Bhattacharjee’s charges today, the Prime Minister dismissed them. “This is politics. We are getting nearer to the elections. Therefore issues are being politicised,” he told reporters.

Yesterday, at a news conference, Bhattacharjee had said: “I don’t want to denigrate our Prime Minister as I have great regard for him. But let me speak the truth. As Prime Minister, he is failing to perform on all fronts. He could not control inflation which has hit the poor people badly.”

He had added: “Look at the leadership he (Singh) has provided to his party. The Congress has lost the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections. I don’t know whether this party will have the same fate in the coming Karnataka polls.”

Sources said the Congress and the Prime Minister had been left deeply disturbed by the comments from a man Singh had a year ago referred to as a “friend”.

Early today, several senior Congress leaders were wondering aloud if it was not better to go ahead and sign the nuclear deal, and then face a general election. The Congress is committed to the Indo-US agreement — which has about three weeks left before it’s likely to go off the boil — but has decided to go slow following Left opposition to the deal.

Congress leaders also wondered whether the Left could be considered the party’s “natural ally” if it was ready to tar the Prime Minister’s reputation to win panchayat-level polls in Bengal. Many felt the Opposition would exploit the “failure tag” on Singh from an ally in the general elections, which are at most a year away.

The Congress today termed Bhattacharjee’s comments baseless, inaccurate and biased. “The entire country is aware of the spectacular record of performance achieved by the UPA government under the leadership of the Prime Minister,” party spokesperson Jayanti Natrajan said.