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Factions are those who violate the party line, writes Prakash Karat
CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat said the media has been portraying “differing political views” between him and party general secretary Sitaram Yechury as “personality clashes” and “personal differences”.
Rubbishing the portrayal of his and Sitaram Yechury’s draft proposals as coming from two rival “factions”, veteran CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat has written in an article that “some went further to depict it as a clash between two individuals, in this case, the current general secretary and the former general secretary”.
“Such a depiction is baseless and wrong,” he adds.
Karat’s article, titled “Draft Political Resolution: Exercising Inner-Party Democracy”, will appear in the party mouthpiece, People’s Democracy, next week.
Last week, the CPI(M)’s Central Committee tried to finalise its political line. Yechury favoured a political understanding with secular parties such as the Congress. Karat didn’t.
Karat, who has often bore the brunt for allegedly taking a dogmatic line as against Yechury’s liberal politics, maintained that in the CPIM, “different views can be expressed; either an individual member or a group of members can present their political views before the committee. After a free and frank discussion, the committee arrives at a decision. If necessary, a vote is taken to decide and the majority view becomes the collective decision of the committee”.
“It is only those who violate the collective decisions of the party and band together for extraneous reasons who are considered to be factional,” Karat wrote, leaving observers guessing if he hinted at the West Bengal unit of the party, which, apart from supporting Yechury’s line, violated the party’s decision and went for an informal understanding with the Congress in the 2016 assembly polls in the state.
He also made it clear that once the CPI(M)’s Party Congress adopts the political resolution, making it the party’s tactical line, “every member of the Party irrespective of what individual opinion he or she held prior to this, will unite to implement the adopted political line of the Party”.
In the article, Karat doesn’t mention the Congress but says that the country is faced with the serious consequences with the BJP in power. “It was hence natural that the Politbureau and the Central Committee had intense discussions on formulating an effective political-tactical line which can counter this threat — a tactical line which can fight the BJP politically, ideologically and mobilise the people to defeat the Modi government,” he writes.
