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The leadership line-up at the CPM party congress in Coimbatore looked quite strange without veterans Jyoti Basu, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Somnath Chatterjee.

This was probably the first major party gathering that the three skipped despite Prakash Karat’s personal efforts to get them there. Karat even offered to charter a private plane to fly Basu down to Tamil Nadu so that he wouldn’t have to take the strain of regular commercial travel.

The ease with which the private jet suggestion was popped shows how much the CPM has changed. Or perhaps its dalliance with power has softened its rigid proletariat tastes.

Karat met Basu as well as Chatterjee to persuade them to put in an appearance. Basu declined because of his frail health. Chatterjee demurred, not wanting to compromise his position as Lok Sabha Speaker with charges of partisan behaviour.

He had to resign from the CPM when he became Speaker, but Karat insisted that he come to a seminar on the sidelines and mingle with his former comrades in a social situation. Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat were deputed to call on Surjeet, more out of formality than real expectations because the former CPM general secretary, who is credited with pushing his party into supporting the Congress after the 2004 polls, is virtually bedridden.

In the end, Basu and Surjeet were just faces on posters plastered at the congress venue. The generational shift in leadership is complete.

With the exit of Basu and Surjeet, a pantheon of five has emerged as the main movers and shakers in the 21st century. Karat leads the pack as general secretary. The other four are Sitaram Yechury, Brinda Karat, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and SR Pillai.

They presented themselves one by one on different days to brief the media about the deliberations. Bhattacharjee has clearly managed to put the in-house tumult over Nandigram behind him and consolidated his position as Basu’s successor in Bengal.

The spotlight focus on Pillai confirmed what we knew all along, that he is Karat’s right-hand man in the party. Interestingly, Pillai was chosen to speak to the media, not the chief minister of Kerala, VS Achuthanandan, who is in the doghouse along with rival P Vijayan for making a public spectacle of their differences.

The Bengali’s love for fish is well known, but somehow the CPM’s Tamil unit forgot to factor it into the menu plans.

Instead, they served up south Indian delicacies and for their carnivorous comrades, they arranged for chicken biryani and meat. A howl of complaints went up from the West Bengal contingent. What? No fish?

Would culinary differences provoke another split in the Left? Embarrassed Tamil leaders apologised profusely, made an urgent telephone call to Chennai and sent for emergency deliveries of fish.

They actually managed to get hold of Bengal’s favourite fish, rahu, and a fresh consignment was flown in every day. The delegation from Kolkata was delighted to find machch-bhaat on the menu after that, both for lunch and dinner.

TAILPIECE

Rahul Gandhi didn’t turn a hair when his mother made the startling announcement that he too would go to jail, if necessary, to revive the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. An eavesdropper heard him say to those around him on the dais that it was no big deal.

He’s surrounded by policemen anyway, he joked.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net