Karat: Didn’t keep out Achutha deliberately

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Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah at the first working committee meeting of the National Conference at Sher-e-Kashm

CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said on Tuesday that the reports that V.S. Achuthanandan was deliberately kept out of the politburo by the party leadership were baseless.
On the contrary, even though there was a demand to restrict the upper age limit of the central committee members, the party congress gave a special consideration for Mr Achuthanandan and retained him in the panel.
He will continue to play a major role in the party and the legislature, Mr Karat told this newspaper.
A section of the party activists were disappointed on Monday, also because of Mr Achuthanandan’s absence at the public meeting on Monday.
When asked about the charge that the party congress failed in adopting clear political and ideological lines so as to help the organisation’s expansion in the northern states, Mr Karat said the party was trying to mobilise masses in states where it was now weak. Like Rajasthan, where the party could expand base by raising the issues of farmers, it was hopeful of taking up people’s concerns vis-à-vistheir daily lives, elsewhere too.
On identity politics gaining prominence in more and more states, he said the party prepared a separate document on the subject and it had been discussed at different levels. The BSP and the SP were masters of this kind of politics, and the CPI(M) did not deem it fit to emulate such political outfits. The CPI(M) will seek to correct such tendencies in a more democratic manner by involving all sections of the society, he said.
On the ambiguity in respect of the party’s position on Chinese socialism and the social problems the economic development there has thrown up, Mr Karat said there was no ambiguity, and the CPI(M), like others, was closely watching the developments in that country.