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CPI-M votes

The post-Jyoti Basu generation, that now helms the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has agreed to disagree. This is quite…

CPI-M votes

CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury (Photo: Facebook)

The post-Jyoti Basu generation, that now helms the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has agreed to disagree. This is quite the most charitable construct that can be placed on the vote during the party’s Central Committee meeting in Kolkata. Though what it calls the “tactical line” will be finalised at the Hyderabad congress later this year, it is fairly apparent that Sitaram Yechury, the present general secretary, had no option but to play on the back foot last Sunday.

His proposal for an electoral alliance with the Congress before 2019 ~ to keep the BJP at bay ~ has been voted down emphatically, arguably a testament to the continuing influence of the hardliner, Prakash Karat. Yet it would be unwarranted for spin-doctors to claim that the outcome is a moral victory for Narendra Modi, still less that Yechury had staked his office on the result of the floor-test. The party is much too astute to realise that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a formidable force in the country.

This isn’t the first time that the Yechury lobby ~ no, it isn’t a faction ~ suitably backed up by Alimuddin Street has pitched for a tie-up with the Congress. It would be pertinent to recall that what the Marxists would call “pragmatic realism” was first advocated by Jyoti Basu in the mid-1990s; the idea attained its frution ahead of the 2004 Lok Sabha election when the Congress assumed power with the CPI-M’s “outside support”.

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The vote has underlined the numerical division within the party over the issue, one that has prompted Yechury to remark that it testifies to “internal democracy”. So indeed it might. While 31 members of the Central Committee backed the general secretary’s proposal, which envisaged a tactical adjustment, as many as 55 members had voted down the idea.

Was there a rift in the Yechury lute? Reports do suggest that al least three members of the Bengal unit, ever so willing to forge an understanding with the Congress, did not favour his proposal. Nor for that matter did he get the support of the powerful unit in Tripura, scheduled to go to the polls very shortly. Apparently, the party in the state, where it boasts the longest spell of Left rule, was loath to confuse the electorate on so critical an issue as the tactical line.

With the defeat of Yechury’s proposal, precedence at the Hyderabad congress in April will almost certainly be riveted to the formulation of Prakash Karat, who has consistently been opposed to any truck with the Congress… exemplified with the withdrawal of support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government (July 2008) post the nuclear deal with the US and the expulsion of Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. The rest is history. For the moment , Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s absence at the CC meeting cannot be wholly attributed to the fact that he has been under the weather. He is still the leading light of the Bengal lobby.

 

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