The South 24-Parganas district conference of the CPM ended on Saturday, triggering an unprecedented crisis with at least 18 of 65 members, whose names were proposed in the new list, withdrawing to express their protest over the composition of the district panel.
Those who pulled out of the new committee said the list had been drawn up by “deliberately” excluding the names of some young leaders.
A CPM source said the incident happened at the South 24-Parganas’ district conference on Saturday night when the names of new committee members were announced and the names of young leaders, including Aniruddha Chakraborty, Anirban Bhattacharya and Apurba Pramanik, were found missing.
“A faction of the district unit with the blessing of a senior state committee member used the ‘democratic’ floor of the conference to establish its majority and sideline leaders having allegiance to central committee member Sujan Chakraborty. Apart from a few young leaders they also did not include in the list district party veteran Khokan Ghosh Dastidar. This precipitated the crisis and prompted at least 18 leaders, who were named in the new committee, to withdraw from the panel,” the source said.
The incident of factional squabble involving senior leaders has embarrassed the state leadership as those who withdrew their names from the panel included former MLA and state committee member Rahul Ghosh, Sujan Chakraborty’s wife Mili Chakraborty and former minister Kanti Ganguly’s son Samya Ganguly.
Asked when CPM state secretary Mohd Salim has been advocating a wider alliance of Left forces to take on the BJP and the Trinamool, an important district unit is afflicted with the malaise of factionalism, a senior CPM leader said on the condition of anonymity: “In our party, everyone has the right to speak. The decision to keep some young party leaders and wholetimers out of the new committee did not go down well with a section of the district leadership and they decided to withdraw their names from the district committee on the floor of
the conference.”
The senior leader, however, said that the “disagreement” would not cast its shadow on party programmes.
“We held a successful public rally at Amtala in South 24-Parganas on Sunday. The rally was well attended and addressed by senior leaders including Chakraborty and Samik Lahiri. DYFI state secretary Minakshi Mukherjee was the key speaker at the rally held to mark the conclusion of the South 24-Parganas district conference that re-elected Ratan Bagchi as the district secretary,” the
leader said.
Several CPM leaders this correspondent spoke to but did not want to be named described the “internal
bickering as unfortunate and unwarranted”, more so at a time when the CPM was finding it difficult to have a toehold on the state’s electoral landscape. However, they admitted that differences was not new to the South 24-Parganas
party unit.
A party leader reminded that even during the heydays of the CPM, the South 24-Parganas district organisation (even when North and South 24-Parganas was together a single district) was a “problem” unit and much of the trouble he added was the presence of a number of
heavyweights.
“Ego and personal agenda of such leaders had created problems in the past and it continues even today,” the leader added.
A CPM veteran, however, could not recollect a similar instance in the Bengal party during his over 50 years as a “comrade”.
“I cannot recall a similar incident happening in the Bengal party. There could be one or two instances of someone withdrawing on personal grounds but 18 members together. I cannot recollect,” the CPM veteran said.
Asked about the withdrawal and factionalism in the party, secretary of the district unit Ratan Bagchi said: “There is democracy in the CPM and difference of opinion on the floor of the conference was proof of that.”
Bagchi said that the 18 vacancies would be filled up later in consultation with the state committee.
Rahul Ghosh, one of the dissenters who withdrew from the committee, refused to comment on an “internal affair of the party”.
