Buddha and Biman to rid CPM of ‘bad blood’

The CPI(M) central leadership has, in principle, agreed to allow chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and party state secretary Biman Bose to rid the party of “bad blood”. The party also decided on a nationwide campaign to highlight how the Trinamool Congress was utilising Maoists to attack Left forces in West Bengal.

The decisions were taken on Day I of a two-day CPI(M) state committee meeting on Sunday. Party general secretary Prakash Karat and politburo member Sitaram Yechuri are attending the meet. Party sources said a majority in the party favoured giving Bhattacharjee and Bose full authority to cleanse the party. Bose and Bhattacharjee’s decisions, however strict, will be acceptable to the party, they said.

State industry and commerce minister and politburo member Nirupam Sen, who presided over Sunday’s meeting, said that of late some party workers and leaders were deviating from the communist ideology. “We will discuss in detail how such a tendency can be eliminated,” Sen said.

Karat said that ill-effects of working closely with the bourgeois for the sake of democracy can sometimes be felt in the party. According to him, the internal cleansing drive undertaken in 1996-97 was not fully successful. He also said that the lavish lifestyle of some party leaders and workers was a major contributor to such deviations.