A whole year has passed since the brutal murder of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode, but the questions it had raised about the CPI(M)’s murderous politics are still haunting it. Serious differences have come up among the top leadership on the eve of a crucial central committee meeting over a probe the party itself had instituted into the killing.
The current round of squabbles among the party leadership started after central committee member VS Achuthanandan, also Kerala Assembly’s Opposition leader, told the Press that there should be an inquiry to find out what happened to the report of the probe the party is claiming to have conducted over the killing.
A central committee meeting of the CPI(M) held in July last had decided to hold a party-level probe into the killing after several leaders and activists became accused in the murder case even when the leadership continued to claim that the party had nothing to do with the crime since it did not believe in physically annihilating political rivals.
The differences of opinion in the Politbureau came out the other day with Sitaram Yechuri saying that it was up to general secretary Prakash Karat to disclose the status of the report on the party-level probe into the murder of Chandrasekharan on May 4 last year. This has generated doubts about the very existence of such an inquiry report.
General secretary Karat had recently said that it would be improper to publish the party’s report on the murder at this juncture as the trial in the case was continuing in a Kozhikode court. Also, he had reiterated that no party worker or leader had any involvement in the murder which had set off a wave of unpopularity as far as the CPI(M) was concerned.
Middle-level CPI(M) leaders are now asking why the party, in the first place, decided to hold such a probe when an official investigation by the Kerala Police was on into the murder. They are also of the opinion that the party would never be able to release the report if it continues to hold that releasing it could influence the trial process.
However, it is now almost clear that Achuthanandan would be using the confusions and suspicions over the report of the party-level probe into the killing as a shield against the efforts of Kerala’s official neo-liberalist leadership to remove him from the position of Opposition leader of the State Assembly.
The central committee meeting scheduled to be held on May 11 and 12 is expected to discuss a resolution passed by the Kerala State committee demanding action against Achuthanandan. The neo-liberalists’ demand is to remove him as Opposition leader, to demote him to an insignificant lower committee or both.
Neo-liberalists headed by State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan are confident that there would be some drastic action against Achuthanandan this time. A four-day State committee meeting starting May 14 has already been fixed in the hope that their moves against the 89-year-old leader would bear fruit.
However, observers feel that the differences of opinion over the non-publication of the announced party probe into the rebel-killing would be helpful for Achuthanandan in defending himself. He is likely to argue that the non-publication of the report justifies the doubts he and the ordinary citizens of the State have over the killing of Chandrasekharan.
The anti-leadership stand taken by Achuthanandan over the rebel’s murder, his visit to the slain man’s home on the day of a crucial Assembly by-poll and his verbal assaults against the Pinarayi and others over the killing had caused much damage to the party, which was already facing public wrath in the name of the brutal crime.