Prakash Karat Prevails Over Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) Says No to Alliance With Congress in 2019

New Delhi: The CPI(M) will have no alliance with the Congress in 2019 general elections, the party's central committee passed a resolution to that effect on Sunday.

Former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat was against any tie-up with Congress and eventually his will triumphed at the party's central committee meeting in Kolkata. The other faction, headed by party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, advocated a softline towards Congress as a tactical move to take on BJP.

Given the difference in opinions, two separate political draft resolutions were placed before the Central Committee and the one moved by the Karat camp won by a 55-31 margin.

It is this resolution of the party's political-tactical line which would be placed for formal adoption at the CPM party congress which is scheduled to take place in April this year in Hyderabad.

The three-day central committee meeting exposed a rift in the party between two factions - and also its two leaders Karat and Yechury.

Since 2014, the CPM has held several meetings of its high-powered Politburo and Central Committees to resolve this tangle but in vain as ideological puritans resisted any attempt to water down party’s opposition to neo-liberal economic policies pursued by the Congress and other secular parties.

Yechury’s draft called for the formation of a Left Democratic Front as a political alternative encompassing all secular forces in the umbrella coalition. To buy peace with the dissenters, he agreed to exclude the ruling class parties from the proposed electoral front, keeping the option of alliance, but still, Karat faction insisted of no truck with Congress policy.

The last time the Communists faced two separate drafts was in 1964 that led to the split of the undivided Communist Party of India, giving birth to the CPM and the CPI.