The 'unanimous' election of Sitaram Yechury as the new CPI(M) general secretary at the 21st party congress in Visakhapatnam on Sunday has shattered the dream of the neo-liberalist leadership of Kerala of pushing its enemy No 1, nonagenarian VS Achuthanandan, into political oblivion. Instead, Achuthanandan may now emerge stronger once again in the Kerala party, feel observers.
The Kerala unit of the CPI(M), which had sent 175 delegates to the congress, had almost unanimously wanted Politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai, known as SRP, to succeed Prakash Karat in the top post not because of any ideological or organisational preference but because of the simple reason that Yechury was a strong supporter of Achuthanandan.
Achuthanandan's joy over Yechury's election was obvious when he said the election marked the start of a change in the party. "His (relatively) young age would be helpful in strengthening the party in the national level ," he said in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. In an extraordinary move, Achuthanandan had on Saturday wished Yechury success in the election to the top party post.
The plan of the neo-liberalists of the Kerala unit, which was still under the control of Pinarayi Vijayan though he ceased to be secretary two months back, was to use the congress as a venue to further punish Achuthanandan, whom they had humiliated in several ways at the State conference in Alappuzha in February despite being the party's only surviving founder leader.
The State secretariat had on the eve of the start of the conference passed a resolution terming Achuthanandan as a person with anti-party mentality. He had walked out of the conference at its start itself following the delegates' concerted attacks against him. He did not even attend the rally on the meet's concluding day despite Karat's orders to participate.
"But they totally failed in achieving their goals at Visakhapatnam," said a former member of the party's Kerala State committee. He said that the decision to strictly implement the norm that those above the age of 80 could not be given full membership in the central committee with the specific goal of expelling Achuthanandan from it.
"They failed in this also," the CPI(M) leader pointed out. Though they succeeded in not allowing Achuthanandan to continue as a member of the panel, they had to make him a special invitee to it. Quite surprisingly, Achuthanandan did not show any objection to the decision. "It is a measure taken on the basis of a clear criterion. There is nothing unnatural about it," he said.
According to sources in the party, Pinarayi had got into a fierce altercation with Yechury during the three-hour Politburo meeting held at the congress venue late Saturday night. Pinarayi had wanted Achuthanandan out of the central committee at any cost but Yechury stood firm in his argument that he should be retained as the party's founder leader.
Yechury had become the enemy of the Kerala leadership after he declared support for Achuthanandan towards the end of the last decade in the neo-liberalist-traditionalist standoff in the State party especially in the context of the CBI probe against Pinarayi Vijayan over the infamous SNC lavalin corruption case in which he was seventh accused.
Pinarayi and his associates had in 2009 succeeded in getting Achuthanandan expelled from the Politburo, a forum in which he was a member since 1985, though party boss Prakash Karat, who had always stood with the Kerala neo-liberalists, had to put into use a part of his histrionic skills, as a pro-Achuthanandan leader joked.
With Karat not in the top position, SRP losing the battle and Yechury becoming the general secretary, the Kerala neo-liberalists fear that Achuthanandan can now get stronger even in the State unit, sources say. They also fear that this could even affect the plans to project Pinarayi as the chief ministerial candidate of the left in the Assembly election to be held in April, 2016.