CPI(M) may go unrepresented from Bengal in RS after April
LONE MEMBER’S TERM NEARS END
The Bengal unit of the CPI(M) which has sent to Rajya Sabha many brilliant speakers, may go unrepresented in the Upper House of the Parliament from April next year.
With its general secretary Sitaram Yechury being denied a third term in the house of elders from West Bengal despite assured Congress support and young RS member Ritabrata Banerjee expelled from the party, currently the lone CPI(M) representative from West Bengal in the RS is trade union leader Tapan Kumar Sen.
Sen, the national general secretary of CPI(M)’s trade union wing CITU, is serving his second term in the RS, which is scheduled to end on April 2 next year.
This will be a big blow for the party that ruled the state for 34 years before being dethroned by Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in 2011.
This would also mean no one from CPI(M) will highlight Bengal-specific issues in the Rajya Sabha. “We will have to depend on our Rajya Sabha members from Kerala and Tripura to raise such issues. For them their own states will surely be their first priority,” a central committee member of the CPI(M) said on the condition of anonymity.
Besides Yechury, other prominent CPI(M) representatives from Bengal were party theoretician Nilotpal Basu, prominent trade union leaders Chittabrata Majumdar and Dipankar Mukherjee, and former West Bengal finance minister Ashok Mitra.
CPI(M) insiders admitted that had the dyed- in- the wool faction of the party not opposed giving another term to Yechury, the party would at least have one forceful voice in the House. “Probably, keeping this in mind, the party gave Ritabrata enough opportunity to fall in line. But his deliberate and continuing breach of discipline made his expulsion inevitable. The party has never gone through such a pathetic state in Bengal,” said the central committee member.
The only option of getting a CPI(M) candidate elected to the Rajya Sabha would be through Congress’ support.
But there are too many ifs and buts. The first hitch is whether the party’s central committee will at all allow an understanding with the Congress.
Considering the current scenario in the CPI(M) politburo and central committee, where the conservative faction outnumbers the liberals, any such proposal would be turned down just as it was done while renominating Yechury.
Secondly, there is a big question mark on whether the Congress will at all agree to back a CPI(M) candidate, sacrificing its own candidate’s chance.
“That is quite unlikely. Getting reduced to a zero in the Rajya Sabha is inevitable for the Bengal CPI(M),” admitted the central committee member.