What is the best felicitation a political party can bestow on its senior-most leader on the occasion of his 90th birthdayIJ The Politburo of the CPI(M) did it to its central committee member VS Achuthanandan on the eve of his 90th birthday by censuring him publicly for his alleged habit of going public with “baseless and unwarranted” statements.

As he celebrates his 90th birthday on Sunday, Velikkakath Sankaran Achuthanandan, who had dedicated 77 of the 90 years of his life to strengthening the Indian communist movement and founding and nurturing the CPI(M), is now perhaps the fiercest enemy of the party’s new-age official leadership driven by neo-liberalist tendencies.

But Kerala Assembly’s Opposition leader Achuthanandan, whose greatest achievement as Chief Minister of the State from 2006 to 2011 was not to allow the new-age party leadership to use governmental power for implementing projects it thought were most suited for ‘development’, does not care anymore.

It is perhaps an irony of the proletarian party to order its only living founder-leader to “desist from making uncalled for remarks in public” for speaking what most people in Kerala and many elsewhere think are correct. It is that public support which is emboldening the old warhorse to push the new leadership from crises to crises of confidence and credibility.

In the interviews he gave to the media on the occasion of the 90th birthday, he made it clear that he was not prepared to change his stand on issues like the leadership’s unintelligent candidate selection for 2011 Assembly election, the SNC lavalin corruption case in which State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan is a key accused and the brutal murder of a rebel last year.

On the occasion of the 90th birthday, he reminded his detractors in the party about how they had tried to deny him seat in the 2006 and 2011 Assembly elections, how general secretary Prakash Karat had to personally intervene in the matter and how unwilling they were to win the 2011 polls just because a victory could have meant a straight second term for him as Chief Minister.

Even on Saturday, on the eve of his birthday, he publicly spoke against the party’s position on the Madhav Gadgil panel report on conservation of Western Ghats by supporting it just when his the CPI(M) was leading the lDF in observing shutdowns against the panel’s proposals. He had earlier shown similar scorn to the party’s stand on the issue of the Kudankulam nuclear plant.

Observers feel that Achuthanandan has reached a point where he does not care anymore about what the party is going to do to him. It is also said that he is opening the bundle of criticisms against the party in one go as rumours are spreading to the effect that a Politbureau commission may soon recommend his removal as State Assembly’s Opposition leader.

For the man who through his relentless legal war succeeded in sending former minister R Balakrishna Pillai into jail for corruption and who is still on an uncompromising fight against Industries Minister PK Kunhalikutty over his alleged role in the sensational ice cream parlour sex scandal, the age of 90 years is not the end of life, says a former CPI(M) theorist.

On Saturday, Achuthanandan gave clear indications that he could soon launch a legal battle against Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy over the infamous solar scam. “Ask him where he is getting the energy for these battles from at this age. His answer would be that age is no impediment for one if he is engaged in just battles,” said the ex-theorist.

However, it is a fact that Achuthanandan has not all along been the great leader acceptable to all sections of the society. He used to be a tough organizational comrade till the turn of the millennium. His popularity as a people’s leader originated in the struggles he took up against corruption and immoral forces during his tenure as Opposition leader between 2001 and 2006.

Along with this struggle in the State’s realm, he fought a war inside the party against the neo-liberalists, which often verged on an ego tussle with Pinarayi Vijayan, which resulted in his demotion from the Politbureau to the central committee in 2009. His so-called traditionalist group was decimated in this war but he still refuses to give up that lonely battle.