It's Advantage Yechury as CPM Holds General Secretary Elections at Hyderabad Congress Today

Hyderabad: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will elect its next general secretary on Sunday, the last day of its 22nd party Congress.

The prospects of incumbent Sitaram Yechury being re-elected to the post have brightened with the party endorsing his political-tactical line, paving the way for an “understanding” with the Congress for 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

This effectively means that the CPM would be ready to enter electoral alliances with the Congress if the situation so demands but it will not form any government with the party.

This view was diametrically opposite to the one held by the Prakash Karat camp, effectively causing a rift in the Left party. The official draft, backed by Karat, had said that the party should unite all secular democratic forces "without having an understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress party".

But in the amended document, it is now written that the party can unite secular democratic forces "without having a political alliance with the Congress party", thus keeping the doors open for an electoral understanding.

In the Kolkata Central Committee meeting in January, the Karat faction defeated Yechury’s draft resolution by 31:55 vote.

Sources had said earlier that the Karat camp was trying to replace Yechury with former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar as the next general secretary. Sources, however, added that Sarkar may not like to challenge Yechury. Whether the Karat camp does prop up a candidate against Yechury remains to be seen.

A day before the crucial intra-party election, the CPM’s political organisational report even stressed on the need to improve “cohesion and mutual trust” among Politburo members.

"There is a need to improve the level of cohesion amongst the politburo members at the Centre. Mutual confidence among members should be developed. For this, when issues crop up, they should be discussed immediately and clinched and not allowed to linger. There is also a serious problem of leakage of inner-party discussions and briefings to the media. This should be inquired into," the organisational report said.