CPM in a mess in Bengal

The sorry state of affairs of the CPM in West Bengal came to light in a recent report by party's state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra.

The report showed the party’s failure in fulfilling its targets regarding women and youth members.

Apart from the membership issue, the state unit of the CPM has also failed to achieve several other organisational targets set at its Kolkata Plenum in 2015.

At the Plenum, the CPM had decided that it was necessary to give more prominence to women and youth members to strengthen its rickety organisation and reach out to voters in a more effective way.

However, according to party sources, the report submitted by Mishra said that there were no women members in majority of the party's local units in Bengal.

"Moreover, according to the report there was no in increase in number of women members in Bengal. It was decided at the Plenum that by 2018 that at least 25% of the total party members have to be women. But during the renewal of party membership this year, the number of women members was just about 10%,” a senior CPM state committee member said.

The state unit’s performance with regard to increasing the number of young members has also been disappointing. Party sources revealed that in 2018, party workers below the age of 31 comprised of 10.40% of the total members in the state but now it had come down to 8.75%.

The development comes at a time when the CPM leadership including general secretary Sitaram Yechury has repeatedly stressed on increasing the number of young leaders in the party to reach out to young voters.

As for the reason behind such failures, party sources said that in most of the cases it has come to light that the leaders of the party’s district committee have failed to perform their organisational duties and strengthen local units.

"The reason behind such disappointing performance of the district committee leaders are lack of coordination, infrastructure and sometimes nothing but unwillingness to work," party sources said.