Karat re-elected, 3 new faces in CPM PB

Prakash Karat was today re-elected general secretary of the CPI(M) by the 19th Congress, which also reconstituted the Politburo (PB) replacing veteran leaders Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet.

While Basu will be a special invitee to the Politburo, Surjeet, a former general secretary, will be a special invitee to the central committee.

Both Basu and Surjeet have been members of the Politburo for 44 years since 1964 when the CPI(M) was formed after the split in the Communist Party of India.

R Umanath has also not been included in the newly-constituted Politburo, but he will continue to be a member of the central committee, the highest decision making body of the party.

Kerala Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, CITU general secretary Mohd Amin and Bengal minister Nirupam Sen are the new entrants in the 15-member Politburo.

Besides Karat, the Congress retained Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan, West Bengal and Tripura Chief Ministers Buddadeb Bhattacharjee and Manik Sarkar, Sitaram Yechury, CITU president M K Pandhe, Pinarayi Vijayan, S Ramachandran Pillai and Biman Bose in the Politburo.

K Varadarajan, B V Raghavulu and Brinda Karat are the other members of the Politburo.

The Congress also elected a 87-member central committee by inducting 17 new members. The members include Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac and Bengal minister Gautam Deb.