CPM inducts new blood into state committee

Kolkata: CPI-M has included four leaders in its state committee, dropping four veterans. The new entrants are Abhas Roychowdhury, Sumit Dey, Anadi Sahoo and Manab Mukherjee.

Both Sahoo and Mukherjee were members in the erstwhile Left Front government. The party has dropped four veterans from the state committee because of their ill health. They are Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Goutam Deb, Shyamal Chakraborty and Madan Ghosh. Bhattacharjee and Deb had written to the party leaders, requesting not to include them in the state committee. Because of poor health, Bhatacharjee has not been able to attend the Politburo meetings in Delhi for the past four years.

There has been a longstanding demand from some leaders in the party to include young comrades and give them important positions in the party. Though the old guards had put up stiff resistance, they had to change their views and throughout the country young leaders are being given important portfolios.

The state leaders also discussed the electoral debacle of the party in the recently concluded three-tier Panchayat polls. Though the party leaders criticised Trinamool Congress for conducting the polls in the "most undemocratic way," the reality is that the party is fast losing ground in Bengal.

Over 60,000 party workers did not renew their membership. The party has got only one seat in Zilla Parishad, while in Gram Panchayat and Panchayat Samity, it has bagged fewer seats than BJP. The party organisation has become weak in the districts like Purulia, East and West Burdwan, Siliguri and Hooghly, which were the party's erstwhile strongholds.

The party has failed to attract young people. Senior leaders said the newly constituted state committee will ink a strategy, which will be followed to restore the party's lost glory.