Tacit understanding b/w CPI-M workers, TMC leaders: Yechury

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury today said there was a "tacit understanding" between some of the party workers and Trinamool Congress leaders in West Bengal.
The understanding, he said, was forged in a "desperate attempt" to capture the local bodies where TMC does not have majority.
"There are reports, there are allegations and charges. There is a tremendous amount of pressure, threat, terror, corruption and intimidation. It is a lethal combination. So through these methods they are trying to lure several comrades.
"Communists are made of better steel than others, but there still may be some people - I am not ruling it out. But we need to resist this atmosphere of terror, threat and intimidation," the CPI-M general secretary told media.

"TMC has been terrorising our workers and threatening them with police atrocities. There is even an attempt to lure them with monetary benefits. They have been doing this with an aim to capture the local bodies where they do not have a majority.
"They are targeting those areas, panchayats and zilla parishads where people did not vote for them. This is happening nowhere in the country. It is unprecedented even in West Bengal," he said.

Yechury, who was addressing the media at the end of the two-day extended CPI(M) state committee meeting to discuss ways to strengthen the party organisation and remove its weaknesses, said the party was taking steps to revamp the organisation.

The state committee meeting, he said, was still on and several issues were being discussed, including the defection of party workers to the ruling TMC.
"To organise mass resistance against undemocratic methods of TMC, we need to have a better organisation. Such methods prove that TMC has not been successful in wiping out opposition parties from the state. We will bounce back in days to come. We have faced such situations earlier too but we had bounced back," Yechury said.
In a bid to expedite decisions to be taken by the party, CPI(M) Bengal unit yesterday discussed removing the zonal committees from the three-tier decision-making process.

The CPI(M) state committee has also discussed the proposal to have more than 25 per cent of party members from below the age of 40 years by the next party congress.
The party, which is slated to hold a state-level plenum, said it will also look into the lacunae in recruitment, training and giving tickets to party workers.