Youth and student leaders of the CPM's Bengal unit have expressed discontent over the limited participation of youth in the party structure and alleged that in many cases the older generation came in the way of infusing new blood into the system.

CPM sources said these questions were raised at the two-day state committee meeting of the party in Calcutta that ended on Wednesday.

"Most movements are organised by student and youth outfits. However, this is not reflected in the party structure because of the reluctance of many of our seniors," a source present at the meeting said.

The source said that SFI state secretary Srijan Bhattacharya and DYFI state secretary Minakshi Mukhejri voiced their concerns on the under-participation of youths in the party and added that both CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury and state secretary Md Salim acknowledged the problem.

The question came up after the party's central committee member Sridip Bhattacharya placed a scrutiny report on the party's performance in the recent past. According to Sridip's report, the percentage of CPM members below 40 years came down marginally from around 24.5 per cent in 2021-22 to about 24 per cent in 2022-23.

However, both the SFI and the DYFI have seen a rise in members. The youth wing added 1.17 lakh new members last year and between 2019 and 2022 the number of active DYFI members has increased by three lakh.

The number of SFI members in Bengal has gone up to 8,39,185 in 2022-23 from 7,44,306 in 2021-22, an increase of 94,879 members. According to a press statement issued by the state SFI on March 31, this is the first time since 2011 that CPM's student wing crossed 8 lakh members in Bengal.

Both the SFI and DYFI have played a significant role in spreading the party's message.

They set up the Red Volunteers network, which did exemplary work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Their contributions prompted the party to field several members of these two wings — including Srijan and Minakshi — as candidates in the 2021 Assembly polls.

During the party's 26th state conference held in Calcutta in March 2022, it was decided to cap the age limit for members in the state committee at 72 and for those in the district committees at 70. Following this, 14 new faces, including SFI’s national general secretary Mayukh Biswas, Srijan, SFI's state president Pratik Ur Rahman, Minakshi, and DYFI's state president Dhrubajyoti Saha, were inducted into the state committee.

A communique sent from the party instructed its area committees to ensure the induction of more persons below the age of 31, to bring down the average age of its members at the grassroots as well.

"But have these decisions brought any change? No. The CPM remains a party dominated by elderly people," a DYFI member said.

Yechury on Adani

CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday continued his attack on the Narendra Modi government's alleged closeness with the Adani Group by calling it a "corporate-communal nexus".

Yechury said the LIC made fresh investments in the Adani Group after the Hindenburg Research report.

Yechury also drew parallels between finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill over the former's recent remark on Muslims.

At an event in Washington DC, Sitharaman said the perception that Muslims had a difficult life in India was untrue as the community's population was "growing".

Yechury said her comment echoed Churchill who compared Indians with breeding rabbits during the 1945 famine in Bengal.