NEW DELHI: As it prepares to take on political rivals in the West Bengal Assembly elections next year, the CPI(M) is faced with an internal enemy. It is worried that comrades are getting corrupted by booze, real estate interests and other corrupt practices.
This confession about the “decline in quality’’ has been made in the draft report to be introduced at the organisational plenum, which will be held in Kolkata from December 27 to 31. The meeting, a crucial ideological conclave for the party, is usually held on rare occasions when important ideological issues are to be discussed. This time the party is expected to chalk out political strategies to tide over the current crisis.
According to the report, there have been increasing instances of un-communist and bourgeois lapses in the party, such as corruption, factionalism, involvement in real estate business, contesting elections against party’s wishes, and so on. The party feels that some of its cadres have stooped to the level of “extreme drunkenness’’.
Stating that the crucial factor in building a revolutionary party is the “quality of the membership’’, the organisational report says CPI(M) suffers from the lack of it.