Thiruvananthapuram: The 22nd
party congress of the
CPM that concluded in Hyderabad on Sunday will be remembered not only because of the decision to keep the option for tactical alliance with any secular party, including the Congress, open but also for the steps taken to end the supremacy of the Kerala unit. After the rout in West Bengal, it was the Kerala unit which was driving the party forward. While former general secretary Prakash
Karat was a trusted comrade of Kerala’s official faction leaders, his predecessor Sitaram
Yechury was ‘a rebel who can’t be trusted’ for them.
In 2015, in the Visakhapatnam Congress, the Kerala unit led by state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and former state secretary
Pinarayi Vijayan tried their best to anoint S
Ramachandran Pillai as the general secretary. It was the Bengal unit, which had by then lost all its charm and bargaining power, took the initiative to ensure that Yechury occupied the chair of the general secretary. Yechury, who had always sided with veteran leader V S Achuthanandan in the inner party issues in Kerala, changed his position to neutral after becoming the general secretary. In 2016, when the CPM-led LDF swept assembly poll, Yechury favoured PB member Pinarayi Vijayan as the chief minister, though followers of VS had expected his support to the veteran leader for a second term as the CM.
The general secretary was pragmatic enough to give Kerala unit and CM Pinarayi Vijayan a freehand in the state’s administration, intervening in Kerala issues only when it became clear that no other option was open.
Sources in the CPM said several senior leaders in Kerala wanted a power change at the centre this time. As their favourite leader S Ramachandran Pillai would be too old to hold the office, they decided to support Manik Sarkar as the general secretary. But, the discussion on political resolution proved that Yechury had an overwhelming majority among delegates and the Kerala unit was forced to redraw its plans. By Sunday, their only target was to retain
SRP in the PB. The state unit hasn’t even explored the possibility of nominating another senior leader to the PB as top leaders were not sure about the loyalty of anyone in the second line. Yechury and members from Bengal accepted SRP in lieu of the other faction’s permission to add two leaders from Bengal to PB.
The unprecedented decision to waive the age limit norm for a PB member to accommodate SRP is also an answer to Karat and Kerala lobby who had rigidly pursued the ‘two-term norm’ for preventing the Rajya Sabha entry of Yechury last year.