Yechury re-elected CPM gen secy

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, April 22

Sitaram Yechury, who defied the majority view in his party and successfully pitched for a tactical understanding with the Congress, was on Sunday re-elected as CPM general secretary for a second term. The re-election, capping weeks of speculation over his future amid internal rift over the political-tactical line, came on the concluding day of the party’s 22nd congress in Hyderabad.

The new 95-member central committee unanimously elected Yechury (65) for another three-year term. He was first elevated to the post at the party’s 21st congress at Visakhapatnam in 2015.

The committee also elected a 17-member Polit Bureau. West Bengal leader Tapan Sen and Nilotpal Basu find a place in the new Polit Bureau while former CITU leader AK Padmanabhan has been relieved. Kerala leader S Ramchandran Pillai continues in the Polit Bureau. MV Govindan Master, chief editor of party publication ‘Deshabhimani’ in Kerala, and former Kerala Assembly Speaker K Radhakrishnan are the new faces in the central committee. Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat, Manik Sarkar, Pinarayi Vijayan, Ramachandran Pillai and Biman Basu are among the members on the central committee. 

“The main task today is to defeat this BJP government and for that all necessary measures will be undertaken,” Yechury said in his acceptance speech. Terming the 22nd party congress as “momentous”, he said, “If any message that should go to the rank and file and to our class enemy, it is the CPM has emerged as a united party. Let us re-dedicate ourselves to the task of protecting the country’s unity and integrity and the Constitution,” he said.

It was a sort of a double win for Yechury as his political formulation, favouring an electoral understanding with the Congress to achieve the larger goal of defeating the BJP, was accepted by the party on Friday when an amended political resolution was adopted without voting.

The amended version removed the phrase “without any understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress” and added “without a political alliance with the Congress.” This was seen as a boost for the Yechury camp. The climbdown came after intense pressure from Yechury's supporters who pressed for a secret ballot vote on the amendments to the draft political resolution moved by Politburo member Prakash Karat.   

The modification assumes significance in the wake of growing convergence among the Opposition parties on the need to build an alternative rainbow coalition to take on the BJP-led NDA in the next General Election. Though the CPM will not have a “political alliance” with Congress, there will now be a greater flexibility to reach tactical understanding with secular parties, including the Congress.