CPI(M) to add 'live-in' option in Party Congress form

New Delhi: Delegates attending CPI(M)’s next Party Congress could record their relationship as ‘live-in’ in the credential form if they choose to, in what is described as a “progressive” move at a time some states are moving with coercive registration of such people.

Every delegate attending the CPI(M) Party Congress will have to fill in credential forms, which have details like their age, gender, marital status, class, organisational responsibilities, occupation, details of cases and jail terms and joining in the party among other things.

The issue came up as the ‘Credentials Committee’ of the Party Congress in Madurai earlier this month was encountered with one who did not fit into the “traditional understanding of relations” as he is in a ‘live-in’ relationship and was reported in the Credentials Report placed before the Party Congress and later approved by it.

“We have recommended that the form should be modified so that a delegate who is in a live-in relationship can have the option to mark themselves as being in such a relationship. We made a conscious recommendation as we accept that relations are being redefined. We reject the targeting of such people. We are accepting the changes that are taking place in society and the traditional understanding of relations” Credentials Committee Convenor Muralidharan told DH.

The CPI(M)’s move comes at a time when some state governments intend to make registration of live-in couples mandatory.

Earlier on the recommendation of the Credential Committee, the CPI(M) had included an option of marking ‘single’ in marital status apart from married and unmarried keeping in mind that there are single parents, widowers and widows among the delegates.

Muralidharan, also a member of the Central Committee, said the party has been mapping such details to find out the diversity that exists in the composition of the delegates attending the Party Congress. Over a period of time, the party had also added the option of “other” in the gender column, breaking the binary of male/female. Another option added a few Congresses back was to identify oneself as having a disability.

The four-member panel, with CS Sujatha, Samik Lahiri and T Jyoti also as members, for the first time gave a comparison of delegates of Madurai Congress with that of the previous one in Kannur in 2022.

According to their report, there was an increase of women delegates from 106 to 120 this time and Dalits from 62 to 83 but a decline was recorded in Adivasi representation from 48 to 42. Seventy of the 729 delegates who attended the Party Congress were born into Muslim families as against 60 last time those born in Christian families were 40 as against 31 last time.

In the Party Congress, the working class composition has increased from 155 to 174 while that of agricultural labourers rose from 60 to 69 and middle class composition from 223 to 254.

Only 12 of the 729 delegates had an educational qualification below Class X while 229 were post graduates and 315 were graduates. The number of delegates above 70 years had come down from 125 to 112.