CPM is supreme, VS tells workers

The factional feud in the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala has brought old arguments to the fore. Struggling to counter waves of dissidence, top comrades are echoing their detractors’ age-old accusation: Party commands supreme loyalty; everything else comes later.

Party publications went on overdrive after politburo member and chief minister VS Achuthanandan hinted that his loyalty was towards the constitution and not with his bête noire Pinarayi Vijayan, the state secretary involved in the multi-crore SNC-Lavalin case probed by the CBI.

He rebuked the politburo’s stand that the CBI case was political victimisation when he said in Delhi that the case was entrusted to the investigating agency by the Kerala high court and criticising it amounted to criticising the constitution. All his cabinet colleagues had echoed the party stand that the Congress was using the CBI to avenge the CPI(M)’s stand on the nuclear deal.

Cooperation minister G Sudhakaran went on to say that those who had betrayed the party would have to beg on the streets. If you are against the party, you cannot remain a minister, he said.

CPI(M)’s mouthpiece Deshabhimani, in an editorial early this month, countered Achuthanandan’s stand. “When the enemy class conspires to attack the party, a real communist should resist and reveal it. Status and posts don’t deter communists to oppose constitutional institutions whenever they turn anti-people. EMS has shown an example in this regard. Nothing stopped him from revealing the class nature of judiciary,” the piece added.

EMS Namboodiripad, the then CM had said: “Judges are guided and dominated by class hatred, class interests and class prejudices and where the evidence is balanced between a well-dressed pot-bellied rich man and a poor ill-dressed and illiterate person, the judge instinctively favours the former….”

The apex court held him guilty of contempt in 1970.