Thiruvananthapuram, July 6 (IANS) With the CPI(M) Central Committee set to meet in New Delhi later this week, all eyes are on whether the party leadership can defuse the unprecedented rebellion brewing in its once impregnable Kannur bastion, where expelled veterans continue to challenge the leadership in public.

The meeting assumes added significance amid growing disquiet within the party.

While the CPI(M) had earlier endorsed Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and State Secretary M.V. Govindan to continue in their respective posts, the rumblings from Kannur have shown no signs of subsiding.

The latest salvo came from expelled Independent MLA T.K. Govindan, who rejected suggestions by senior CPI(M) leaders that he could return to the party if he corrected his mistakes.

Responding to remarks by CPI(M) State Secretariat member M.V. Jayarajan and State Secretary M.V. Govindan, the former party veteran asserted that he had committed no wrongdoing and that it was the party not he that had erred.

“It is the party that has to correct its mistakes,” he said, adding that a day could come when the CPI(M) itself would be compelled to discuss bringing leaders like him back into its fold.

He also challenged the leadership to spell out what mistakes he had actually committed.

T.K.Govindan dismissed comparisons with late CPI(M) dissident M.V. Raghavan, saying Raghavan returned to the party only after his health had severely deteriorated, while the Communist Marxist Party (CMP) rejoined the CPI(M) only after his death.

He further accused those who had led the party astray of being the real class traitors and said the present leadership had little moral authority to lecture others.

The unrest in Kannur traces its origins to the expulsion of T.K. Govindan and V. Kunjikrishnan after they revolted against the party.

Neither had previously contested elections, but both later emerged as the Congress-led UDF’s consensus candidates and went on to score emphatic victories in traditional CPI(M) strongholds, delivering one of the biggest political setbacks for the party in Kannur.

The criticism has since widened.

Former CPI(M.) minister G. Sudhakaran, who also won as a UDF-backed candidate after parting ways with the party on Monday questioned M.V. Govindan’s moral authority to continue as State Secretary and demanded that he step down.

The developments have exposed an unusual phase of public dissent within the CPI(M), particularly in Kannur, long regarded as the party’s ideological and organisational citadel.

The Central Committee meeting is expected to indicate how General Secretary M.A. Baby intends to tackle the growing unrest and restore organisational discipline in a district that has traditionally been the party’s strongest fortress.

–IANS

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