New Delhi, Nov 11 (IANS) The continuing violence in West Bengal’s Nandigram area is the focus of discussions at a two-day politburo meeting of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) that began here Sunday.
Initially, the expected debate in parliament on the Indo-US nuclear deal and the coming elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh were expected to be the main agenda.
But the escalating tensions in Nandigram have made it the centre point of the deliberations, CPI-M sources said.
“The CPI-M has to discuss strategies to bring the situation under control,” said a party leader, admitting that the issue has “virtually shaken the party and the Left Front (in West Bengal).
“The state government has to control the situation and the party has to keep the alliance intact,” he said.
The CPI-M politburo meeting began a day after three major allies of the party in West Bengal’s ruling Left Front expressed displeasure over the way the way the situation in Nandigram has been handled.
In Nandigram, CPI-M cadres are pitted against critics of the state government’s earlier enthusiastic policy of taking over farmland for industry. The unrest has embarrassed the CPI-M, which has considered itself a champion of the peasantry.
The Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc – partners of the CPI-M – are holding a separate meeting in Kolkata Sunday to discuss Nandigram.
The politburo meeting comes a day after CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat and his CPI counterpart A.B. Bardhan met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to discuss floor coordination in the winter session of parliament that will debate the Indo-US nuclear deal.
CPI-M sources said the politburo would also assess the situation in Kerala, where a long-standing internal party feud has resurfaced.
Leading the two factions are Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan and state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.
The politburo members are also expected to finalise the draft for the political resolution that is to be presented in the party’s next Congress due to take place in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.