Former CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said the “wild and baseless speculation” about a crisis in his party and of “factional disputes and conflicts”, will be laid to rest after the upcoming party congress in Hyderabad.

In an article written for the forthcoming issue of CPI(M) mouthpiece People’s Democracy , Karat said a majority view, or, a minority view, within a committee on a political question is not to be seen as a line-up of two factions. “Factionalism and factional groupings are impermissible as per the Party Constitution. It is only those who violate the collective decisions of the Party and band together for extraneous reasons who are considered to be factional,” he said.

He said even before the Central Committee meeting held in Kolkata, reports had appeared in mainstream media about a ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ document to be presented before the panel. “Most of them were either ill-informed about the style of functioning of the CPI(M) as a Communist Party, or, they utilised the occasion to draw motivated and distorted conclusions intended to depict the party leadership in a poor light,” Karat alleged.

He said the reports depicted the debate as a clash between General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and Karat. “Such a depiction is baseless and wrong as discussions on differing political views and approaches within the framework of inner-party democracy are reduced to personality clashes and so-called personal differences. Another mistaken but common assumption is that the Draft Political Resolution is mainly concerned with the electoral tactics to be adopted at the time of the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.”

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