Kolkata, May 24 (IANS) : Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu has asked senior party leaders to reach out to the people of West Bengal to find out the reason for the party's poor showing in the Lok Sabha polls, his personal aide said.

"Basu has asked his party leaders, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose to reach out to common people and find out why the people had not voted for the communists in the Lok Sabha elections," Basu's personal assistant  Joykrishna Ghosh told IANS.   

"Basu has asked both of them (Bhattacharjee and Bose) to look into the issue seriously. He also instructed them to make people understand the policies of the Left Front (LF) and what they are willing to do for the common people in Bengal," he said.   

Declining to divulge any further details of the talks, Ghosh said that Basu had separate dialogues with Bhattacharjee and Bose at his Salt Lake residence.   

Meanwhile, the CPI-M leaders also held a state committee meeting here Sunday to discuss the dismal result of the LF in the general elections.   

According to figures available, the LF got 43.3 percent of the votes (about 18 million) while the Trinamool Congress and the Congress jointly secured 45.67 percent of the votes (a little over 19 million) in the Lok Sabha polls.