Over 25 percent members inactive, lack ideology: CPI-M
By IANSMonday, January 25, 2010
AGARTALA - At least 25 percent members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) are inactive and have deviated from communist ideology and the party’s class character, a central committee member said here Monday.
“A considerable number of party members are not of appropriate quality and the party should remain alert about them,” Bijon Dhar, also the secretary of the CPI-M’s Tripura state committee, told reporters.
The left leader was talking to journalists after a two-day state-level conference, where CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat, politburo member and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and other top party leaders explained the details of the ‘rectification plan’ to strengthen party units at all levels.
Over 225 front and middle-ranking party leaders in Tripura participated in the conference, a first of its kind organised by the CPI-M, after its debacle in last year’s Lok Sabha elections in left-strongholds West Bengal and Kerala.
The Tripura state committee of the CPI-M prepared a detailed document on the loopholes of party members and a road map to strengthen the party organisation and presented it before the conference.
Dhar said: “Tendencies at parliamentarianism, which means frustration among party members whenever denied nomination for elections, over-dependence on elected bodies for providing relief to the people, aversion to mass movement, refusal to act upon the principle of democratic centralism, and departure from progressive ideology and scientific approach are some of the major deviations.”
The CPI-M leader dismissed the idea of the Left Front losing the elections in West Bengal in 2011 and in Tripura in 2013 as ‘too simplistic’.
“We know how the people respond to particular situations and conditions. These are only self-cheating,” he added.
The conference also discussed ‘unethical and dishonest acts, a self-centric mentality and craving for sensual pleasures’ of a section of party members.
“The CPI-M would launch a massive campaign against the misdeeds of party men, increase the political consciousness of members and improve relations among party activists and people,” Dhar added.
The conference also identified administrative loopholes in implementation of government decisions and schemes and over-dependence on the bureaucracy.
“The process of the rectification campaign at the political, ideological and organisational level is to remove the wrong trends and shortcomings so that the party emerges more unified and strengthened,” says the conference document.
It updates the party’s 1996 rectification campaign report and is based on the experience of the party in the past 14 years.
More than 148 party leaders were killed in Maoist attacks in West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, while CPM supporters were attacked by political rivals in Andhra Pradesh in the past one year, Dhar said.
