VS Achuthanandan out of politburo as Karat reign continues

Eighty eight-year old VS Achuthanandan, the only surviving ‘founder member’ of the CPI(M) has been ousted from the party’s politburo.

Subsequently, a visibly upset VS boycotted valedictory function of the Party Congress at Kozhikode.

Prakash Karat, who was re-elected as party general secretary for the third time, announced the 15 names in the reconstituted politburo. MA Baby from Kerala was inducted in place of VS. “In all probability, Baby will be the next general secretary of the party when Prakash Karat steps down in 2015,” Appukuttan Vallikkunnu, a former CPI(M) ideologue told that “But it is not known whether Baby can attract crowds like the way VS used to do. He has no charisma or mass appeal,” said Vallikkunnu.

Suryakant Misra (Bengal) and AK Padmanabhan (Tamil Nadu) are the other new faces in the PB. The other members are Prakash Karat, Pinarayi Vijayan, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, S Ramachandran Pillai, BV Raghavelu, Manik Sarkar, Brinda Karat, Sitaram Yechuri, K Varadarajan, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Nirupam Sen and Biman Basu.

A senior CPI(M) delegate said the ouster of VS and induction of Baby are fallouts of the shadow boxing between Karat and Yechuri. “Yechury fought till the last moment for induction of VS in the PB. Hereafter we can expect a long drawn out war between the duo,” he said.

Vallikkunnu, who earned the wrath of the party leaders for pointing out the lapses, said Karat has become a prisoner of a coterie of Kerala and West Bengal units. “Since the maximum delegates were from these two states, Karat had to toe the lines of local satraps like Pinarayi Vijayan. The new breed of leaders resembles corporate honchos rather than the comrades who sacrificed lives for the poor and suppressed classes,” he said.

Berlin Kunhanandan Nair (88), the only surviving delegate of the first congress of the CPI, said the party congress has made it clear that the CPI(M) has become irrelevant in India. “I would like to describe it as the Confused Party of India (Marxists),” thundered Nair. He pointed out that the CPI(M) had declared in the run up to the Party Congress that it would work for the Left Front.

“The next day, S Ramachandran Pillai declared that they would form a Left and Democratic Front. On the concluding day the party said it would enter into electoral alliance with regional parties wherever possible,” he said.