The CPI(M) has decided to bend the party norms to afford its general secretary Sitaram Yechury a valued third term in the Rajya Sabha by subverting the ‘one-man-one-post’ principle.
The Bengal State secretariat of the CPI(M) has decided in favour of re-nominating Yechury for the third term and a proposal to this effect will be placed before the politburo the highest decision making body of the party on June 6 or 7 for ratification.
The Bengal Marxists have justified their decision in favour of Yechury because “the party will not get to nominate another member from the State before 2019,” sources said.
The State leadership also wants Yechury to remain in the Upper House because of his good personal chemistry with the Congress high command and being there in Parliament will help him coordinate with the centrist party on a day-to-day basis, experts feel.
Incidentally the CPI(M) top boss had earlier sounded tentative on his preferring a re-nomination saying party norms did not allow a member to seek a third term in Rajya Sabha. Besides he also reminded that one person in the party could discharge one responsibility at a time. He being the party general secretary should therefore not go for the third term in the Upper House, insiders said.
With six seats up for the grabs from Bengal the Trinamool Congress has already declared five names including that of “fugitive” Congress MlA and former PCC president Manas Bhunia who won his Assembly seat in 2016 on Congress ticket and with left assistance before switching to the Trinamool Congress after a murder case was slapped against him by the ruling party.
Mysteriously the police stopped searching for
him after an equally mysterious meeting between him and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the State Assembly where after
he walked into the Trinamool fold.
While without Congress help Yechury may not be able to get a ticket to the Upper House the Bengal Pradesh Congress like Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi have reportedly expressed its eagerness to back Yechury for the sixth seat.
It is only after getting some kind of assurance from the Congress that the State CPI(M) leadership has cleared the party general secretary’s name, insiders said.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated development Trinamool Congress MP and chit fund accused Sudip Bandopadhyay was on Wednesday readmitted to the State-run SSKM Hospital with heart ailments. Bandopadhyay who had lost several kilos after he was arrested by the CBI for his alleged links with chit fund company Rose Valley was in incarceration for more than four months in Bhubaneshwar jail.
He was later shifted to private hospital which vouched for his illness and the evidence was produced before the Cuttack High Court by his lawyers to get him released on bail. The CBI is scheduled to file a fresh appeal in the Supreme Court demanding cancellation of his bail.
Bandopadhyay was admitted to the State-of-art Woodburn Ward Room No 12.5, the enclosure in which his fellow party leader Madan Mitra also accused in a separate chit fund case was housed for several months.