The State and Central leaderships are coming under heavy criticism at the ongoing conferences of the Kerala CPI(M) over a plethora of issues but mainly the politics of violence the party has allegedly been pursuing and inability to ensure success of own agitations. The branch committee meetings are being held in preparation for the 21st party congress to be held at in April.
Sources in the CPI(M) said that the discussions that took place in some of the branch committee meetings in Kannur, which has the strongest district unit of the party in the entire country, had shocked the leaders as members attacked them for the politics of murder they were allegedly pursuing, especially in Kannur and Kozhikode districts.
An anti-violence sentiment was perceptible among the members and activists at almost all branch meetings held so far in Kannur, sources said. “The main criticism is that the leaders, especially those from Kannur, are unable to free the party from the image it has got of being an organisation of murderers,” said a pro-CPI(M) cultural leader from Kannur.
Speakers at branch conferences have been attacking the leadership, particularly State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and Kannur district secretary P Jayarajan though indirectly, for being unable to free the party from the setbacks it suffered following the brutal murder of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam in Kozhikode district on May 4, 2012.
Despite the repeated claims the leaders had been making about the party's innocence in the Chandrasekharan murder case, they were not able to convince the people on this, the party members and workers are arguing. At the same time, the arrogant postures adopted by the top leaders created a feeling that they had to conceal several things, they say.
“A big complaint is that the murder of RSS leader Manoj (at Kathiroor in Kannur on September 1) has complicated the situation for the party when it was struggling to get out of the Chandrasekharan murder case. They are pointing out that no sensible Keralite will believe the party if it says that it had nothing to with the Manoj murder,” said the cultural leader.
An interesting aspect of these criticisms against the leadership coming up at the branch meets in Kannur itself is that this is happening just when the leadership's grip on the hundreds of party villages - considered so far as impregnable communist fortresses - in the district and in Kozhikode is reportedly loosening.
Reports from Kasaragod, adjacent to Kannur district, indicate that a general hatred has been spreading through the grassroots committees in that district against the so-called Kannur lobby headed by Pinarayi, which is allegedly responsible for the culture of violent politics. Speakers have been attacking the Kannur lobby saying that it would eventually destroy the organisation.
The discussions at branch committee meetings in central and southern Kerala are mainly on the party leadership's failure to transform its agitations over serious issues into successes. The biggest example of this weakness was the withdrawal of the agitation over the solar scam within 36 hours of its start without getting any clear assurances from the Congress-led Government.
The general complaint being heard at the branch meetings is that the withdrawal of the lDF siege on the State Secretariat on August 13, 2013 over the solar scam issue without getting a positive response from the Government had created an impression that there was a secret understanding between the CPI(M) leadership and the ruling Congress.
In many branches, members showered scathing criticisms on party general secretary Prakash Karat, according to sources. They are of the opinion that he cannot deny his role in leading the West Bengal party to its present crisis and that he has not been showing the shrewdness in devising poll strategies as his predecessor Harkishen Singh Surjeet used to show.