22 Jun 2009,ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: CPM’s troubles with its faction-ridden Kerala unit look set to get worse. Kerala state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan’s supporters and senior ministers of the V S Achuthanandan government continued to target the chief minister at CPM’s central committee (CC) meeting on Sunday.
With the “oust VS” demands continuing at full steam, the party is expected to hold a special polit bureau meeting in early July to resolve its Kerala mess. But after the CC meet, the stage is set for pressure on the party from both the VS and Pinarayi camps to see the other person resign.
At Sunday’s meeting, Kerala education minister M A Baby and some of his colleagues continued the attack against Mr Achuthanandan for the poll disaster as well as his refusal to toe the party line on condemning the governor’s nod to prosecute Mr Vijayan in the SNC Lavalin case.
The party also discussed the failure of CPM’s hurriedly put together third front experiment. With a majority of the party’s West Bengal leaders coming around to this view, the Nandigram issue as the prime reason for the party’s failure in the state seems to have been relegated to the closed chapter status. West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee might have regained some of his clout after this CC view, but in Kerala the party is still badly divided.
It has a tough task at hand now as it will find it difficult to take disciplinary action against Mr Achuthanandan or ask him to step down without touching Mr Vijayan in the exercise. There are several factors that make this an uncomfortable decision for the party. Firstly, the CM’s supporters in the polit bureau and CC have argued that Mr Vijayan cannot continue as CPM Kerala chief due to the graft case against him.
They have cited the party’s stand against RJD leader Lalu Prasad to bolster their argument, stating that CPM had made a demand for his resignation in the wake of his involvement in the fodder scam. Secondly, with Mr Achuthanandan holding on to his image of being the most popular CPM man in the state (outside the party), any move to oust him might backfire on the Marxists. Also, Kerala CM has the support of a section of the West Bengal party.
However, CPM’s dilemma is that any attempt at maintaining status quo in Kerala will only give the Opposition Congress a bigger stick to beat it with. The VS government is already in the grip of an administrative paralysis due to the open revolt of a number of senior ministers against the chief minister.
On Saturday, it was state finance minister Thomas Isaac who set the ball rolling on the CM’s resignation issue at the CC meeting. With other senior members of the state government, such as Mr Baby, reiterating the demand, the chief minister did not have too many voices speaking up for him at the meeting.
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