Basu, Surjeet exit Politburo, Karat re-elected gen secy

Rajeev P I & Bidyut Roy

COIMBATORE/KOLKATA, April 3: The 19th party congress of the CPI(M), which on Thursday formally re-elected Prakash Karat as its general secretary and replaced veterans Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Jyoti Basu and R Umanath in its Politburo, gave indications of its changed priorities by the choice of members from West Bengal for the executive body of its policy-making Central Committee.

The party inducted West Bengal Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen, Kerala Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and CITU leader from West Bengal Mohammed Amin into the Politburo.

Basu will now be a special invitee to the Politburo, while Surjeet will have a similar status in the Central Committee which has five more special invitees — Samar Mukherjee, E Balanandan, P Ramachandran, Pappa Umanath and Mallu Swarajyam. R Umanath will continue to be a member of the Central Committee. As special invitee, Basu will not be entitled to vote in the Politburo and will not have to attend all meetings.

While Basu and Surjeet had been in the Politburo from the time the undivided Communist party split to spawn the CPI(M) in 1964, Umanath was described to be one of the two longest serving party members to attend the party congress, having been a member since 1939. The 15-member Politburo retained its earlier members, who include Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, Sitaram Yechury, CITU national president M K Pandhe, Pinarayi Vijayan, S Ramachanran Pillai, Biman Bose, K Varadarajan, B V Raghavulu and Brinda Karat.

The induction of Sen — to fill the vacancy created by the sudden death of CPI(M) West Bengal secretary Anil Biswas in March 2006 — is expected to give more political and organisational muscle to Bhattacharjee’s drive for industry and reforms and pave way for private and foreign capital.

“Sen’s appointment will ease the pressure on the Chief Minister. So far, he has had to deal with private investors as well as the doubters within the party,” said a senior CPI(M) leader in Kolkata.

After the CPI(M)-led Left Front came to power in West Bengal in 1977 on the promise of land reforms, the first minister to make it to the Politburo apart from Jyoti Basu was Benoy Krishna Chowdhury, then the leader of the CPI(M)’s farm front and Land Reforms Minister.

Sen’s entry has ended the chance of Shyamal Chakraborty, the West Bengal president of the party’s labour arm CITU.

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.