Before the crucial meeting of the Central Committee (CC) to discuss Kerala affairs, the CPM state unit has hinted that it will prefer to go by the self-defending election review of the state committee, rather than the critical, final and publicised review of the CC.

This is the latest in the string of incidents in which the party state committee, controlled by secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, has deliberately demonstrated that the state faction would have its own way in approaching the uncomfortable reports and review of the party higher-ups.

The CC, which had met in June to review the elections, had found the Lavalin controversy and the alliance with the PDP among the factors that led to the Left defeat in the state. Normally, the lower units of the party are liable to go by the report ratified by the CC. In the case of the poll review, the state committee report was not a final one, but was subject to the scrutiny of the CC.

However, on Thursday, the party newspaper Deshabhimani, dominated by Vijayan, in its edit page article quoted the state committee’s unpublicised poll review, in a bid to wish away the Lavalin controversy and the PDP alliance. The write-up, Ideology of the abandoned well, was attributed to a ‘critic.’

Quoting the state committee report, the party daily said, “The UDF had succeeded in making the party alliance with the PDP a controversy during the elections. The anti-LDF forces raised the allegation that the PDP was an extremist force, fearing that the PDP support would strengthen the LDF. The UDF resorted to this strategy to weaken the LDF by raising the terror issue.”