The factionalism in the CPM took a turn for the worse when the official faction insisted on demoting VS loyalist and CPM Mundur area secretary P A Gokuldas to the Kongad local committee which was resisted by majority of the members of the area committee.
The CPM dissidents have planned to hold a convention at the KAV auditorium in Mundur on Tuesday to announce a new outfit.
CPM area committee meet, convened at Mundur, resulted in 7 members walking away from the meet. The Mundur area committee was part of the Malampuzha constituency represented by Opposition Leader V S Achuthanandan.
In the morning, CPM district secretary C K Rajendran reported the resolution of the district committee and the district secretariat, which had decided to demote Gokuldas, based on the report of the Inquiry Commission. He was accompanied by district secretariat members P K Sudhakaran, T N Kandamuthan and R Chinnakuttan.
The district committee had earlier appointed a Commission of Inquiry consisting of P K Sudhakaran and T Chathu (both from the official faction) to look into the allegation that Gokuldas was responsible for the suicide of his wife.
The commission reported that Gokuldas was guilty. The commission recommended that Gokuldas should be demoted to the Kongad local committee. The district committee had given a letter to Gokuldas not to attend the area committee meet on Monday. Seven of the 16 members of the area committee walked out of the meet held on Monday.
They were Mundur local committee secretary V Lakshmanan, Kongad local committee secretary T Ajith, Keralassery local committee secretary P R Sajeev, Akathethara local committee secretary Ramanujam, district panchayat member Sethumadhavan, CITU divisional committee member Swaminathan V and DYFI block secretary Rajesh Kumar. Another Gokuldas loyalist, Zulfiqar, of Malampuzha, was admitted to a hospital in Coimbatore.
Moreover, two members of the official faction - Akathethara panchayat former president Sadasivan and Palakkad block panchayat vice-president Ramakrishnan - also expressed their discontent against initiating action against Gokuldas.
Thus the area committee meet held on Monday saw only 5 of the 16 members supporting action against Gokuldas.
The members supporting Gokuldas pointed out that the family of the deceased wife of Gokuldas had met CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and said that they had no complaints against Gokuldas.
But still the commission had given a report indicting Gokuldas owing to personal grudge of some official faction leaders, the members said.
CPM district secretary C K Rajendran in his reply said that there was no coterie in the district leadership.
Later, the general body at Puduppariyaram in the afternoon, called by the CPM to endorse the decision to demote Gokuldas was attended by 50 members.
There should have been at least 175 members at the meet since the general body was to be attended by all branch secretaries and members of the local and area committees. The VS faction boycotted the general body meeting.