Truce in CPI(M) as Yechury wins current round

After weeks of debate between party chief Sitaram Yechury

(pictured) and his predecessor Prakash Karat over their party’s political tactics for the next three years, there were on Monday indications of a rapprochement within the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The truce came in the wake of a show of strength from Yechury that the rival camp had not anticipated.

Of the 63 members who attended the central committee meeting in New Delhi, 32 supported Karat. The former party chief wants CPI (M) to persist with its 2015 political resolution, which had identified the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the party’s principal enemy, but has also said that there could be no truck with the Congress since that party’s neo-liberal policies had brought the BJP to power.

However, as many as 31 central committee members spoke in favour of Yechury’s argument that the principal enemy was the BJP, and the CPI (M) at this juncture needed to be part of a broad national alternative of left, secular and democratic forces to challenge it. By virtue of it being a panIndian party and the chief Opposition to the BJP in most states, the Congress would be a part of such a platform.

According to sources, of the 32 who supported Karat, at least two were ambivalent. Yechury found support not just from delegates from north Indian states, but also some of the delegates from Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Former Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan and current finance minister Thomas Isaac supported Yechury.

The near vertical division led the central committee to decide against voting. It issued a communiqué that makes an effort at reconciling both the Karat as well as Yechury lines. Before the central committee had met, a majority of the Politburo members had voted against the Yechury line, but had forwarded both the outlines to the central committee.