Yechury is CPM gen secy

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Visakhapatnam, April 19

Sitaram Yechury, widely seen as a pragmatic voice of the Left, was today unanimously elected the new general secretary of CPM at the party’s 21st congress held in this port city of Andhra Pradesh.

Yechury (62) succeeds Prakash Karat and is the fifth general secretary of the 51-year-old party. The election of Yechury, who is the party’s leader in the Rajya Sabha and a member of the politburo, capped weeks of speculation over who would take over the reins of the Marxist party.  Both Yechury and politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai were said to be in the race for the key post.

On the concluding day of the six-day congress, the newly-elected Central Committee unanimously chose Yechury after his name was proposed by the outgoing general secretary and seconded by Ramachandran Pillai.  The announcement was made by Karat amid loud cheers from the 800-odd delegates gathered from all over the country.

The party congress elected a 91-member Central Committee whose names were proposed by the outgoing general secretary. It also has five special invitees and five permanent invitees.  Significantly, veteran leaders VS Achuthanandan, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Nirupam Sen were dropped from the Central Committee. Instead, they will be special invitees.

It also elected a 16-member politburo which has four new members — Hannan Mollah, Mohammad Salim, Subhashini Ali and G Ramakrishnan. The Central Committee has 17 new faces, including three women.

Yechury listed out the challenges facing the party and said, “The 21st Congress is a congress for the future of our party, our country and Left unity. Our task is to strengthen the unity of the Left and democratic forces. The conclusion of this congress is that the crisis in capitalism continues to deepen in the world and there is no alternative except to strengthen the struggle for socialism.”

Calling the BJP its main enemy, he said: “The Centre has unleashed a new trimurti: communalism, neo-liberal economic policies and erosion of democratic practices. We must ensure that this trimurti does not convert into a 'trishul' that pierces India’s  heart.”