It is a conference that would see the baton change hands in the State and give a broad hint of the way forward for the country’s premier Communist party in its most important bastion today. But the focus of public and media attention as the CPI(M) State conference begins here on Friday is on party veteran V.S. Achuthanandan.
The public spat between CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and Mr. Achuthanandan over the party State secretariat’s resolution against the Leader of the Opposition has only brought into focus what was already in the making.
Organisational report
The organisational report, to be presented by Mr. Vijayan, has a long portion attacking Mr. Achuthanandan and this is certain to become fodder for those among the delegates who are waiting to pounce on him. With Mr. Achuthanandan choosing to shoot off a letter to the Polit Bureau and the party State secretariat going to the unprecedented length of publicly chastising him for leak of the letter on eve of the State conference, the stage is set for a full-throated attack on the veteran.
The CPI(M) leadership has the argument that what it has tried to do is to assess the functioning of each leader and it was only natural that Mr. Achuthanandan earned a lengthier treatment than others given the several instances when his words and deeds ran counter to the common position of the party Polit Bureau, Central committee and the State panels.
Mr. Achuthanandan had sought to put across his position through a letter at the last State committee meeting here on February 9-10, failing which he chose to let the Polit Bureau know what he thought about the party in Kerala and its current leadership. Among the many issues that the party will have to discuss is the failure of almost all the agitations it had launched over the past three years and huge challenges it faces from the Sangh Parivar even in its safe havens.
The challenges at the national level are even more forbidding. All these challenges and how the party should refashion its tactics and strategies have been discussed from the grassroots upwards for debate and adoption at the Party Congress to be held in Hyderabad in April and, ideally, should find resonance in the discussions of the State conference.
Apart from these, the most important point of interest is the change of guard in the State. Mr. Vijayan would demit office and the wide consensus, unless something really surprising happens, is on the possibility of Kodiyeri Balakrishnan taking over as the new State secretary.
