Bowing to pressure from allies, the Communist Party of India-Marxist led Left Front on Saturday decided to immediately stop land acquisition in Nandigram and withdraw the police from there in phases to defuse the tension after Wednesday's police firing.
The second round of the crucial Front meeting also decided that the state government would be run strictly on the basis of policies decided at the LF meetings.
With this, the crisis in the three decade-old Front over threats by partners like CPI, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party threatening to pull out over police action at Nandigram, seemed to have blown over.
"We are happy that the crisis has ended temporarily. We are at one meeting point. We will have to watch the situation," senior RSP leader and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami said after the meeting.
LF chairman Biman Bose, briefing reporters, said, "The Left Front is there and will continue to be there."
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and CPI-M patriarch Jyoti Basu, who played the role of a crisis-manager, were also present at the meeting.
