Organisational weakness lead to party’s downfall: Surya

He was speaking at the first day of the two-day state committee meeting of the party.Party’s secretary Sitaram Yehchury and another PB member Prakash Karat and former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya were present at the meeting.

Misra said the party would have failed to field polling agents had the tie-up not been formed. Over 2 crore people have voted for the party.It would be unfortunate if the alliance was broken. “We cannot leave the hand at this stage,” he observed.

Interestingly, digressing from the earlier stand, Misra on Saturday did not term the alliance as one formed by the people. On the contrary, he made it absolutely clear that it was “an alliance of convenience.”“The party would have been washed out had the alliance not been there,” he remarked.

However, Misra’s statement was against the PB’s observation that “The alliance was formed not in consonance of the party’s central committee decision.” On Friday, Left Front chairman and party’s former state secretary Biman Bose had said that LF would not invite Congress to join its programmes. 

Before the three day central committee meeting which would be held between June 18 to 20, Misra’s statement was likely to create a stormy affair. In a desperate bid to save himself from the wrath of central committee, where state leaders are minority and PB, Misra blamed the organisation for the failure. However, he did not explain why no steps had been taken to strengthen the organisation.

Party insiders said never in the past had a state secretary blamed the party’s organisation so vigorously. The party has only 26 MLAs, the worst in the past 39 years. In 1972 when CPI(M) withdrew its candidates alleging rigging and had boycotted the assembly session, the party had 14 MLAs.

However, state committee members refused to buy Misra’s logic. They maintained that in that case Misra should have concentrated more on augmenting the party’s strength instead of holding Congress’s hand. They alleged that Congress had reaped the benefits of alliance and got 44 seats against 42 seats in 2011.

They alleged that Misra had talked about party’s organisational weakness and in a desperate bid to save his back he was sometimes talking about violence or party’s organisational weakness but never holding the wrong decision to frame the tie-up as the most important reason behind party’s poll debacle.