THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Communist Party of India (CPI) leadership meetings will begin here on Wednesday.
Starting with the state secretariat, the meetings will discuss the party commission report on the drubbing the party received in Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency.
The state executive meeting will be held on Thursday while the state council meeting will be held on August 8 and 9.
Speaking to ‘Express’, CPI state secretary Pannian Raveendran said the agenda of the meetings will be decided only on Wednesday morning. However, he said, the focus of the meetings will be the upcoming party conferences starting in the month of September.
Party branch conference, to be held in September, will be followed by local, mandalam, district and state conferences. The conferences will culminate with the party congress to be held in the first week of May next year. The date of these meeting, however, have not yet been finalised, he said.
Asked about the report of the party commission, which probed the poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections, he said that he had not seen the report yet. ‘’What has been appearing in the media about the report is speculative. I haven’t seen the report yet,’’ the CPI state secretary said.
It was a panel comprising P K Krishnan, P Prasad and Thilothaman MLA which conducted the sitting and prepared the report. There has been unconfirmed reports that the commission had prepared the report underlining the fact that some undesirable dealings had taken place in the selection of candidate Dr Bennet Abraham for the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency. CPI leadership had denied this ever since the allegations started doing rounds in the political circles. Regarding reports of a section of the Left leaders’ overtures towards Kerala Congress(M) by offering its leader K M Mani Chief Minister ship, Pannian Raveendran said that party would not encourage defection and horse-trading for the sake of coming to power.
‘’Making Mani Chief Minister is not in our agenda. We don’t want anyone in the UDF to strengthen their position for bargaining in the Front at our cost,’’ he said.
Pannian, however, said that the party would consider the issue if Mani comes out of the UDF fold. ‘’Now Mani is part of the UDF. Let him come out of the UDF fold first. Then we can discuss the matter,’’ he said.