Bengal CPM’s clean up falls short of expectations

CPM’s drive to remove inactive party members in West Bengal hasn't met the expectations of the state leadership.

According to party sources the process to remove inactive party members has “slowed down to some extent” and has not been up to the mark so far.

Interestingly, the CPM state leadership earlier claimed to have removed nearly 40,000 inactive members.

“Although we have made some progress in removing inactive members but that is far from meeting our expectations. So far the outcome has been rather disappointing,” a senior CPM state committee member told DH.

He also said that the party is yet to have the complete statistics of the removal process.

A section of the CPM state leaders said that slowed down was because of “organisational issues.”

“ We are yet to remove a substantial number of inactive party members. Although it is one of our top priorities but the process has slowed down a bit due to organisational issues ,” said another member of the state committee.

Currently, the CPM has about 2-lakh members in West Bengal, party sources said.

The decision to remove inactive members was taken at CPM’s Kolkata Plenum in December,2015 where the party laid down five rules for its members to be considered active— Regularly paying membership fee and levy; the engagement of a member in party classes and agitations has to be satisfactory; a member has to subscribe and read party organs; it is compulsory for a member to take part in mass work of the party unless exempted by the leadership; the member has to regularly attend branch meetings of the party.

The state leadership then made it clear that members who do not comply with the rules will be considered “inactive” and their membership will not be renewed.

The state leadership’s disappointment over the issue came to the fore in a recent tweet by CPM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra wherein he emphasised on the need to have “more dedicated whole time workers in the party organisation” and to “increase the span and capacity of resistance.”