Why V S Achuthanandan is keen on CPM committee meet outcome

KOLKATA: A nonagenarian passing through rough weather at the fag end of his political career would be paying close attention to the outcome of the CPM central committee meeting that began in Kolkata on Thursday.
Unable to get a berth in the politburo, former Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan, who is in the city, is looking up to the committee to reconsider the party axe on three aides - personal assistant A Suresh, press secretary K Balakrishnan and additional private secretary V K Sasidharan - who had been working with him since 2006.
The expulsion proposal that was ratified in a meeting of the CPM's Kerala state secretriat in early January is likely to come up in the committee meeting. on the grounds that their membership was with the state centre.The fact that the decision would be considered by the central committee offers little relief to
V S has been strongly defending his aides from the axe for the last four years.
While Suresh is privy to some private matters, the other two had been assisting him in preparing speeches following the expulsion of K M Shajahan, his one-time confidant. The trio was charged with leaking out the state leadership's report submitted to the party congress held in Coimbatore in 2007 criticising Achuthanandan, the then Kerala chief minister, for his role in demolishing unauthorized constructions in Munnar and other parts of the state.
The CPM initiated an inquiry against the three and found them guilty. The expulsion proposal that has been kept in abeyance will come up for ratification in the meeting. While a section of the CPM's West Bengal unit is soft towards the "impeccably honest" leader, insiders maintain that the committee is likely to endorse the state secretriat's proposal, given the clout the CPM Kerala party secretary and party politburo member, Pinarayi Vijayan, commands.
Faced with a difficult situation in the two major party turfs - Kerala and Bengal - CPM general secretary Prakash Karat preferred to lie low urging the committee members to stengthen the party's independent activities and the democratic platform without making any tall claims for a hasty electoral alliance with other parties as he tried in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
Instead, Karat took time out of the meeting on Thursday and paid a visit to injured CPM veteran Abdur Rezzak Mollah in a bid to pacify the leader who has been taking on the CPM brass, particularly Karat himself, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen, following the CPM reverses in Bengal. due to the government's "faulty industrial policy." .
The committee condemned the decision of the UPA government to decontrol diesel prices. It is likely to undertake a string of agitation programmes against the "anti-people" policies.