Unification talks rule CPI meet

Merger is a long way off, says Bardhan

The issue of the unification of the two main Left parties, the CPI and the CPI (M) figured prominently at the inaugural session of the 19th congress of the CPI being held here .

CPI (M) General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, who was present at the opening session to address CPI delegates, talked of a "united Left", but did not mention the need for or the possibility of a merger.

In fact, Surjeet warned the press to "not turn unity into unification". Responding, CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan said: "From his point of view, he says this. There is nothing wrong in it. From my point of view, ultimately it will have to be done, but that is a long way off."

This stated position of the two parties on the issue of merger, however, did not stop veteran CPI leader Satyapal Dang, invited to hoist the party flag, from asking his party to actively "campaign" for a merger with the CPI(M).

According to Dang, the CPI has realised its mistake in characterising the CPI(M) as "Trotskytes" but the Marxists has continued to "label" the CPI as "revisionist".

The CPI had spilt in 1964, resulting in the formation of the CPI(M). The significant difference between the two parties lay in their stand on the Congress.

The CPI took the "revisionist" line of "unity and struggle" in relation to the Congress, a party it acknowledged as bourgeois. The CPI(M) modelled itself as just an "anti-Congress" party.

With the emergence of the CPI(M) as one that is numerically stronger and more influential at the Centre, the CPI has had to couch its call for merger in less direct terms. Bardhan had said before the party congress began that there was a need for "much closer co-ordination" between the two Left parties. But he did not use the word merger.

The draft political resolution of the CPI does not use the word merger. "Unification has become desirable and possible, but it cannot be posed unilaterally," it said.