The Communist Party of India (Marxist) began a brain-storming exercise to regain lost ground and rejuvenate the cadre with a four-day meeting of its central committee in New Delhi on Sunday.
On the central committee’s agenda is an elaborate introspection exercise on the party’s course in the last quarter of a century charted after the Jalandhar Party Congress in 1978, sources said. Not only has the CPI (M) suffered electoral setbacks in the strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala in the last few years, the party’s national footprint has also been shrinking.
The party has also expressed concern in the recent past over the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the two States. The BJP, on its part, is working hard to dislodge the Left parties as an alternative to Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. Though the CPI (M) is still a national party, its numbers in the Lok Sabha are down to nine at present from 44 in the 14th Lok Sabha.
Subsequent deliberations on the CPI (M)’s political and tactical line are likely to shape the draft political resolution to be presented at the next Party Congress in Visakhapatnam early next year. Apart from the draft document circulated to the central committee members that finds fault with the tactical approach of the party since 1978, there is a line at variance with the official draft. According to this line, the party’s tactical and political line is not to blame for the CPI (M)’s losses, but the manner in which it has been implemented in the last decade or so.
The Party Congress will also see a change in leadership with CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat having completed three consecutive terms – the most allowed by the party constitution. The foundation for the exercise was laid down at a meeting of the CPI (M) Polit Bureau in July accepting the need for a change.
