The party assessed that the reasons for its defeat differed from state to state. (Express photo by Shashi Ghosh/File)CONCLUDING THAT the controversy over women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple has alienated a section of the Hindus in Kerala, the CPM central leadership has asked the state unit to work out a plan to win back the confidence of the believers even as party veteran V S Achuthanandan suggested that the party requires a “perspective tactical plan”.
The CPM central committee, which met here for three days from Friday to analyse the party’s disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections, is learnt to have also devised a multi-point action plan to strengthen the CPM’s independent strength and political intervention capacities.
The assessment that a section of its believers had moved away from the party because of the Sabarimala controversy is in a way a subtle disapproval of the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s handling of the controversial issue. The CPM central committee said the Kerala leadership from its top echelons to the bottom rung will have to work hard to win back the confidence of the believers.
Achuthanandan, meanwhile, in a note to the central committee called for a “perspective tactical plan” rather than cosmetic efforts to reconnect with the masses. The CPM central committee also felt that many of the decisions taken by the party plenum, held in 2015 the wake of the party’s defeat in the 2014 elections, were not implemented by many states. The CPM central leadership will now prescribe a time table for implementation of the plenum decisions.
Sources said Politburo member B V Raghavulu came in for much criticism in the central committee for forging a “Bahujan Left Front” in Telangana ahead of the Assembly elections. Many of the members are learnt to have argued that the party in Telangana should not have succumbed to social identities and caste politics.
The party assessed that the reasons for its defeat differed from state to state. While Sabarimala played a major role in Kerala, the Left was edged out in West Bengal because of the binary politics between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP and the Congress’s decision not to align with the Left. It felt that both the BJP and the Trinamool parties had indulged in competitive communal politics.
