Yechury waves a red flag over party resolution

New Delhi : The CPI(M)’s bid to change tactics to meet present day political challenges has brought out divisions within the party, with senior leader Sitaram Yechury opposing the stand taken by the Politburo and, by extension, general secretary Prakash Karat. The CPI(M) central committee, during a four-day brainstorming session which started on Sunday, was attempting to revise its political-tactical line, adopted at the party’s Jalandhar Congress in 1978.

During the session, Yechury moved an “alternative document” to the draft review report finalised by the Politburo. He is learnt to have repudiated the conclusions made in the draft report, presented by Karat.

Yechury’s five-page document, circulated among members of the central committee, is learnt to have questioned the Politburo’s opinion that the political-tactical line adopted in 1978 had many shortcomings, which hampered its expansion outside Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, and its consolidation in the three states. This comes in the wake of a drubbing received by the party in the Lok Sabha elections.

One of the key directives of the Jalandhar Congress, held in the aftermath of the Emergency, was to forge the unity of Left and democratic forces to defeat the Congress. The party applied the “united front tactics” with what it called “various bourgeois-landlord parties” in several states and at the national level over the years fairly successfully.

The draft finalised by the Politburo is learnt to have concluded that the effort to mobilise the regional parties into a third front has proved to be unrealistic and erroneous.

Yechury, on the other hand, believes that there is nothing wrong with the 1978 line and argues that it failed because of shortcomings and “subjectivism” in implementation in the last decade. He further argues that this, along with organisational weaknesses, is to blame for the electoral setbacks.

Yechury’s repudiation of the official draft is the latest incident in the tug of war between him and Karat. His stress on shortcomings in implementation in the last decade is significant, given that Karat succeeded Harkishan Singh Surjeet as general secretary in 2005. Karat’s stint at the CPM’s helm comes to an end next year and the latest tiff comes in the backdrop of a succession war.

Sources said that Yechury had conveyed his point of view in the Politburo meeting held on October 13 and 14, but the Karat camp had the upper hand, because of which the draft was accepted for consideration by the central committee. Yechury, however, did not relent and moved his objections in the form of a note.

What complicated the exercise is the decision of another Politburo member, B V Raghavulu, to place his “views” in the form of a separate note. It is rare for Politburo members to present such notes before the central committee after the Politburo reaches a conclusion on an issue.