Kolkata: CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat today attended the party's West Bengal state committee meeting, where ‘criticism and self-criticism' took place to review its disastrous show in the recent Lok Sabha elections. “There was criticism and self-criticism,” CPI(M) MP Mohammad Salim told PTI here.
Salim, one of the two CPI(M) candidates to have won from West Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls, however, said that change of leadership was not on the agenda.
“Those who know the functioning of the Communist party are aware that issues like change of leadership does not figure in state committee meetings,” Salim, also the committee member, said.
“What is being said in a section of the media in this regard is not correct,” he added.
Apart from Karat, the two-day meeting which began during the day, was attended by Politburo members Sitaram Yechuri and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. Former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the party's state secretary Biman Bose, both Politburo members also attended the meeting.
“The state committee will discuss the reports from the districts and send its report to the central committee which will send it back after assimilation,” Salim said. On May 27, for the first time in the history of the CPI(M) since its formation in 1964 after breaking away from CPI, a rally was organised outside the Alimuddin Street party headquarters by both present and expelled leaders, who questioned the party's top brass and demanded an immediate change in leadership to save it from being wiped out from state politics.
The CPI(M), which had won 9 seats out of 15 won by the Left Front in 2009 Lok Sabha elections, was reduced to only two seats, while its other constituents failed to open their accounts in West Bengal in this election.
