In an unprecedented move, reflecting both despair and desperation, the CPM Politburo, the party’s highest decision-making body, publicly reprimanded and suspended from its membership two of its most powerful leaders Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan and state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

Reading out a resolution on the issue, a grim-faced general secretary Prakash Karat said both of them “have made remarks and criticisms regarding each other to the media. These remarks and open criticisms by the two senior leaders in Kerala have violated the norms of the party...that the state leadership should not air their differences publicly.” Such behaviour, he said, is “unacceptable” and, therefore, the Politburo (PB) decided to suspend them and place the matter before the central committee (CC) which meets exactly a month from now from June 24-26.

The two comrades “will continue to discharge all their other party responsibilities,” Karat added, making it clear that Achuthanandan, popularly known as VS, will continue to function as chief minister and Vijayan as state secretary.

Today’s decision may have been triggered off by the open war between the two bitter rivals in Kerala — its latest battle over the state government’s demolition drive in Munnar — but the problem of factionalism in Kerala and the helplessness of the central leadership in bringing the state unit to heel has a much longer history.

As such, today’s PB decision is not just a signal to the Kerala leaders to mend their ways ahead of organizational elections from the branch level upwards that will soon get underway, but also an attempt to restore the declining authority of the central leadership over state units and ensure that the principal organizational tenet of a communist party — democratic centralism — is not allowed to get eroded.

... contd.