Nonagenarian Marxist VS Achuthanandan, the only surviving founder leader of the CPI(M), is presently an orphan in his own party for all practical purposes. He does not belong to any of its elected committees anymore despite the fact that he is still the Kerala State Assembly’s Opposition leader, thanks to the alleged determination of the State’s neoliberalist leadership to finish him off politically.
That the destiny of Achuthanandan, one of the 32 communist leaders who walked out of the national council of the undivided CPI in 1964 to form the CPI(M), is to remain an orphan in his own party at least for some time became obvious the other day when a meeting of its Kerala State committee declined to take a decision on the proposal to induct him into it.
The party also dropped him from its State secretariat on Saturday and left to the central committee the matter of deciding the fraction to which he should belong. It had dropped the 92-year-old leader from the State committee during its reconstitution at the end of the party’s State conference held in Alappuzha in February.
The party had in 2009 expelled him from the Politbureau, in which he had been a member since 1985, as part of a disciplinary action linked to divisionism in the Kerala unit. His alienation from party panels became complete after he was dropped from the central committee at the 21st CPI(M) congress held from April 14 to 19 at Visakhapatnam.
“You will get a fair understanding of all such matters later,” Achuthanandan said when the reporters asked him about the State committee’s refusal to take up the issue of including him in it. Currently, Achuthanandan is just an ordinary member of the party. Contrary to predictions, Achuthanandan had attended Saturday’s meeting of the State committee, of which he was not a member, using his status as a special invitee of the new general secretary, Sitaram Yechuri.
This was the first time Achuthanandan had attended a meeting of the State committee since his walkout on February 21 from the State conference of the CPI(M) in Alappuzha. He had rejected then general secretary Prakash Karat’s orders asking him to return to the conference and to attend the rally held in Alappuzha.
“The neoliberalist State leadership may be feeling proud about the continuous dishonouring of Achuthanandan, the senior-most party leader in entire India, in forum after forum but they are forgetting the fact that he is still the most popular leader the party and the lDF have,” said a former Kochi-based theorist of the CPI(M).
Observers view the orphaning of Achuthanandan in the party as an inevitable culmination of a 13-year-war between him, leader of the traditionalist faction, and former State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, chief of the neoliberalists. “Vijayan ceased to be secretary in February after a 17-year-long stint but he seems to be controlling the party still,” said the former Marxist theorist.
However, the neoliberalists are worried about the fact that Yechuri, the new general secretary, is a supporter of Achuthanandan. In his first interview after being elected as party chief, Yechuri had said that Achuthanandan, a former chief minister, could still contest elections if he was healthy and energetic and that he would lead the left’s campaign in the next election.
Observers say that Yechuri’s statement could have worried Pinarayi who was projecting himself as the left’s next chief ministerial candidate. Achuthanandan had boycotted the State conference following the passage of a resolution by the State secretariat which described him as a man with anti-party mentality and he concerted attacks against him at the meet by neoliberalists.