Politburo meets, to do so again; Bengal unit lead questioners of Karat policies
After two years of regular electoral drubbing at different levels from the Lok Sabha to Gram Sabhas, a section of the CPI(M) has embarked on a mission near-impossible: to make the Prakash Karat-led majority to admit it was a mistake to have withdrawn support from the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2008.
The group, led by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and state secretary Biman Bose, feels the Left’s “timing of withdrawal of support” from the first successful secular coalition (that finally completed its full term) was “wrong”. B V Raghavulu, the general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh unit, is also known to be harbouring similar sentiments, along with some more leaders. According to a leader of this group, “We are questioning the timing of that decision. We were unprepared at that time.”
This rebel section is also likely to press the line that the idea of a “cut and paste Third Alternative political force”, weeks before last year’s general election was also wrong. After withdrawing support from the Congress-led UPA, Karat had aggressively worked to form a ‘Third Alternative’, with parties such as the JD(S), TDP, AIADMK, BJD, etc.
The first draft of this review document was discussed in the politburo meeting here. Sitaram Yechury told the media that the “first round” of discussions on the document to “review the implementation” of the political-tactical line adopted in 2008 had taken place.
CC to be convened
The CPI (M) has called an extended Central Committee (CC) meeting in August to discuss its current political-tactical line. As the party Congress is likely to be deferred and there is pressure from the Bhattacharjee camp to “correct” the mistakes before the Assembly polls in West Bengal and Kerala next year, Prakash Karat had to agree to place his political line under scrutiny.
Given the current composition of the CC and the politburo, the ambitions of this lobby face tough challenge. Karat enjoys more than a two-third majority in both these crucial committees. And, the CC had mentioned in its resolution that it was a correct decision to withdraw support in July 2008. A Karat loyalist told Business Standard, “On the contrary, many in the party feel support should have been withdrawn much earlier. But, as the West Bengal unit was facing trouble over Nandigram killings, the party had to wait.”
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The politburo will meet again, on July 3 and 4, before the draft is sent to the CC for approval, clearly indicating the tussle within the party’s top leadership over the issue. This, a CPI(M) leader pointed out, is a deviation from the usual practice, because a politburo meeting generally straightaway leads to a CC meet.
The reason behind calling another politburo meeting is clear: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his industry minister Nirupam Sen were absent in today’s meeting. The party needs to know their viewpoints before finalising the draft. Sen is known to be a Karat loyalist, while Bhattacharjee’s relation with the party general secretary is currently as cold as an iceberg.
Third Front issues
When he took over as the general secretary of the party in 2005, Karat firmly believed that any Third Front electoral arrangement was to be knitted only before the elections, while leaders like Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet propagated that it had to be a long-term affair. This theory, in turn, allowed the Surjeet-Basu camp to hobnob with the Congress. With Karat propagating an aggressive anti-Congressism in the party, the Third Front alternative was an issue always under question.
The challenge posed by the Bengal lobby, that has given communism it’s longest democratically elected government in world history, is likely to resolve the dilemma in the party, to be or not to be with the Congress—at least for the near future.
So far, the Karat lobby has been successful in making Bhattacharjee and Co realise the buck stops with them, after pointing out that the bad Lok Sabha election results last year in Kerala and Bengal were mainly due to local factors. But, the efforts of the anti-Karat camp are significant because this is the first time Karat’s policies have come under such challenge since the hardliner took charge of the CPI(M).