Hyderabad: Perhaps no party Congress of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) would have been so watched and nationally so crucial as this time, which commences in Hyderabad Wednesday.
The party's Congress got off to a start with the General Secretary Sitaram Yechury inaugurating the session. In his speech, Yechury stressed the importance of defeating the BJP at the national level, protecting democracy in the country, joining hands with secular forces. However, Yechury's speech was noticed as falling short of criticising the Congress party, but was fiercely critical of the BJP and RSS.
The day will see, after the inauguration, the leadership huddled for cardinal decisions, over five days in a land resonating with memories of Telengana armed struggle, and the fight for independence from Nizam's rule.
By CPM's structure and decision making format, it is the party Congress that takes ultimate decisions regarding policies and strategy applicable at national level. However, the resolutions before the Congress is evolved through lower bodies like the Central Committee and Polit Bureau. This year's conclave assumes greater significance as the venue where CPM's stance regarding political alliances or tactics for the 2019 general elections will be decided. The resolutions approved in the party's pre-Congress bodies, the Central Committee and the Polit Bureau had advocated, at the international level strong opposition to US imperialism, and at the national level, identifying BJP as the chief foe in national politics.
However, and this is the sticking point, at issue has been the vexing idea of giving support to Indian National Congress or reaching electoral understanding with it. Party observers, sometimes read as critics even if they are on the left of the political divide, have tended to ascribe two conflicting view points - on whether or not to have some level of ties with Congress - to two schools of thought within the leadership led by former party General Secretary Prakash Karat and the current General Secretary Sitaram Yechury.
Although the Karat resolution of keeping Congress at arm's length, and seeing it as another block of free market advocates not much different from the BJP, got a fairly strong majority in the Polit Bureau, the party's Bengal unit, one of the three strong state units besides Kerala and Tripura, is strongly opposed to that.
The CPM leadership in Kerala has consistently been proponents of an anti-Congress stance, although those in the leadership like nonagerian VS Achuthanandan support Sitaram Yechury in that the prime opponent being the BJP, electoral adjustments with the Congress should not be a no-no. Kerala being a scene of the traditional protagonist fronts the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) taking on each other in every election, and ruling the state in turns over a few decades, no wonder that the CPM's state unit can see the Congress as an ally at the national level. All the political campaigns of the party have consistently been targeting the Congress as its arch-foe, besides the BJP, as an equal foe neither less nor more than the Congress.
The Hyderabad meet will also elect a new General Secretary, and there is no bar for the incumbent Yechury being re-elected for a second and last time. He was elected at the party Congress in 2015.
The inauguraal session will be followed by the presentation of draft political resolution to be discussed through the 19th. On the 20th, the political organizational report will be presented. The elections of the new General Secretary, Polit Bureau and Central Committee will be held on 22nd. The same day will see the party's massive rally at Saroornagar Stadium.
The Congress is expected to discuss and pass 25 resolutions. As a prelude to the Congress, the Polit Bureau and Central Committee met here on Tuesday and discussed the amendments received for the draft political resolution. Out of the ten lakh members of the party, 763 representatives will take part in the sessions plus another 70 observers. Most representatives are from the party's biggest units of Kerala and West Bengal, 175 and 165 respectively. Tripura, the other stronghold of the party, has 50. Leaders of sister left parties, CPI, CPI (Liberation), Forward Block, RSP and SUCI also are attending the conference. As in last Congress, no foreign delegates have been invited to the meet this time either.