In a bid to stave off the growing pressure to step down, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat quickly rejected by the offer by Biman Bose, secretary of the party’s West Bengal state committee, to quit over the rout in the Assembly elections.
Mr Bose, taking moral responsibility for the CPI(M)’s worst electoral performance in the state, had offered his resignation at the party politburo meeting here on Monday. Rejecting it, Mr Karat apparently said that if all senior party leaders went on a “resignation spree”, then he too could come under pressure to resign, according to sources. The politburo meeting was then abruptly ended, and it was decided to continue discussions on the poll debacle at the forthcoming central committee meeting due on June 10. Earlier, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who led the party to defeat in the state and also failed to get elected to the state Assembly as an MLA, had offered to resign from all top CPI(M) bodies, including the politburo and the central committee. His offer too was rejected by the Marxist leadership.
Mr Karat, who is facing severe criticism within the party, has decided to cling on to his post by any means, and on Tuesday described the debacle as a “collective failure”. At the politburo meeting, however, he tried to shift the entire onus for the defeat on both the Bengal and Kerala leaderships, holding the two chief ministers responsible for the rout. Sources said that Mr Karat has realised that if he resigns as general secretary, it “just could be the beginning of his political demise”. Close aides are learnt to have asked him to take an aggressive line and “approach the friendly television channels to project the defeat as a ‘collective failure’.”
But despite Mr Karat’s desperation, the matter is expected to come up at the CPI(M) party congress scheduled to be held in Kolkata at the end of the year. An attempt is also being made by Karat loyalists to defer the party congress indefinitely, the sources said.
The CPI(M) state committee, which met in Kolkata on Tuesday, meanwhile decided that party leaders should “go to the people to protest against the post-poll killings of Marxist cadres”. The sources said the party has asked its cadre “not to retaliate”.
In New Delhi, most CPI(M) leaders expressed growing concern over the “future of the party” in national politics. Mr Karat, who tried to put up a brave front in front of the national media, is, however, avoiding that issue within the organisation, party sources added.