The Kerala CPI(M) had the other day severely criticized nonagenarian central committee member VS Achuthanandan for publicly contradicting the party's stand on two key issues but by limiting the action against him to the mere passage of a resolution is being viewed as an indication of how valuable his popular image was for the party for facing the coming election.
Though there was demand from neo-liberalists controlling the party for stringent action against Achuthanandan for violating organizational discipline. However the party State committee was forced to avoid asking the central leadership for any action mainly because they could not afford to antagonize him in the context of the coming lok Sabha polls, CPI(M)-watchers said.
Top CPI(M) leaders opined that the party should have taken a more serious approach to Achuthanandan's indiscipline this time as he had made certain "unilateral public statements" that contradicted the party's accepted stand but they admitted that such a decision at this juncture might affect the prospects of the entire left in the election.
"leaders like Pinarayi Vijayan (State secretary) do not see eye to eye with VS but they know very well that he is the only credible and popular leader the party has got in Kerala. They also know that taking stringent action against him at this stage would cause resentment in the party and among the common people," said a former CPI(M) theorist.
The party passed the resolution on Sunday against Achuthanandan for openly supporting the call by Revolutionary Marxist Party leader KK Rama for a CBI probe into the "conspiracy" behind the murder of her husband and Marxist rebel TP Chandrasekharan and for publicly questioning the party decision to absorb a group of BJP rebels in Kannur.
Achuthanandan had offered open support to Rama's call when the neo-liberalists were laboriously trying to claim that the January 22 court verdict in the Chandrasekharan murder case had exonerated the party as some of the CPI(M) functionaries accused of conspiracy in the case had been acquitted.
Achuthanandan irked the CPI(M) leadership further with his demand for fulfilling the promise made earlier by general secretary Prakash Karat that any party men proved to have any role in the murder would not remain in the party. The Kozhikode court had found three prominent CPI(M) leaders guilty of conspiracy in the Chandrasekharan murder case.
In the case of the development in Kannur, Achuthanandan had publicly criticized the district unit of Kannur under the total control of Pinarayi-loyalists by indicating that the BJP rebels was about to be absorb into the party were not the reformed men but are still followers of Narendra Modi as they had recently constituted a NaMo Vichar Manch after leaving the BJP.
The resolution adopted on Sunday by the meeting of the CPI(M) State committee which was presided over by Politbureau member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, himself a neo-liberalist from Kannur, said that Achuthanandan had made his statement supporting Rama's "illegal" demand for CBI probe without discussing the matter in the party.As far as the issue of the BJP rebels was concerned, the resolution said that Achuthanandan's criticism was "unnecessary and inappropriate" as he had made it without even trying to understand the background of the development by raising his doubts within the party. The BJP rebels are set to join the CPI (M) at a function on Tuesday in which Pinarayi will take part.
A VS-loyalist claimed that the party is still scared to take stringent action against him.