Thiruvananthapuram, March 31 With hours left for the 24th CPI-M Party Congress to commence in Tamil Nadu's Madurai from April 2, the party's national leadership is working overtime to arrive at a consensus on the new General Secretary before the party flag goes up at the five day meeting.
At the moment, three names are doing the rounds for the top post - the senior-most Central Committee member M.A. Baby, who is also a Politburo member, of Kerala, then All India Kisan Sabha President and Maharashtra peasant leader Ashok Dhawale, and West Bengal veteran Mohammed Salim.
The interest is more this time as nobody from Kerala has served as the General Secretary of the party since the legendary EMS Nampoothiripad stepped down from the post in 1992.
Of the three, Salim has already expressed his desire to stick to his home state and work for the revival of the party, which was in power there for more than three decades, but the virtually disintegrated with the arrival of Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress, and also with the Bharatiya Janata Party gaining ground.
Meanwhile, the Kerala unit, which is firmly grounded under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, does not favour Dhawale, and hence, it remains to be seen if Baby will get the nod.
However the catch is that with Baby not in the good books of Vijayan, it remains to be seen if the party will give an extension to any of the retiring Politburo members as according to the party constitution, all who attain the age of 75 have to bow out from all party posts. The only one to get an exemption and extension is Vijayan.
Even though the dice is loaded heavily in favour of Baby, it remains to be seen if the Party Congress will go in his favour of Baby or succumb to the choice of Vijayan.
Apart from Vijayan, the others who have already crossed 75 include the present in charge General Secretary Prakash Karat and his wife Brinda Karat, Manik Sarkar, Subhashini Ali, Surjya Kanta Mishra, and G. Ramakrishnan.
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