Subhas Chakraborty has done it again. Two days before the last round of elections in Bengal, he has said things that could make Prakash Karat or even Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee see red.

“The topmost leaders” of the party should fight elections, Chakraborty told STAR Ananda tonight, taking a veiled dig at leaders like Karat, the CPM’s general secretary, who have never contested elections.

Chakraborty, transport minister and CPM state secretariat member, said he had suggested this to the then party state secretary, Pramode Das Gupta, at a state committee meeting many years ago. But Das Gupta did not accept the idea.

“One of the main conditions for becoming a leader is how much people know him and how much he knows the people,” Chakraborty told the channel in an interview.

“I had told Pramode Das Gupta that all leaders should verify people’s impressions about themselves and not lead the party from inside closed doors. People should get a chance to test the leaders. If I don’t get first-hand experience of what is happening outside and only get reports of it, how will I know how much reality the reports reflect?” he added.

Contacted, Karat said tonight: “I have nothing to say about what he (Chakraborty) has said.”

Mohammed Amin, a politburo member from Bengal, however, said it was the “party’s prerogative” to decide who would contest. “The party fields those who are suitable to fight elections. Manik Sarkar of Tripura, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of Bengal and V.S. Achuthanandan of Kerala are all our politburo members and have fought elections.”

Of the politburo members, Karat’s wife Brinda and Sitaram Yechury are members of the Rajya Sabha.

Chakraborty, however, said there was a “tradition” in Indian politics of non-elected members ruling the roost in their parties. He cited the cases of Mahatma Gandhi, the late Atulya Ghosh (Chakraborty was wrong because Ghosh had fought elections) and CPM state secretary Biman Bose.

The minister questioned the wisdom of the party’s call for the formation of a third front government at the Centre. He said he could not figure out how it could happen. Even if it did, he was sure such a government would not last long.

In another dig at the party chief, whom Chakraborty did not name, the minister wondered how the BJD of Naveen Patnaik could suddenly be acceptable as a secular party after having been an ally of the BJP for 11 years.

The minister blamed the Nandigram trouble on “lack of communication” with the people. He said the governor should not have been involved in the government’s attempts to resolve the Singur crisis. “These are titular heads who have some ornamental functions but no executive powers,” he said.