CPI (M) 2-day state meet begins, Yechury, Karat arrived

Ahead of assembly election, the two day long CPI (M) state committee meeting begins on Monday morning, where CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and party’s polit bureau member Prakash Karat were also arrived in the state capital to participate in the crucial meet.

Sources said that all the state committee members including party’s state secretary Jitendra Chowdhury , opposition leader Manik Sarkar and other veteran leaders has also participated in the meeting to finalise the party’s poll strategy, selection of candidates and overall final resolution for a possible alliance with other likeminded parties including Congress and with other regional parties.

Sources added that CPI(M) along with other Left parties including CPI, RSP, Forward Bloc and CPI(ML) will continue their Left Front alliance and will share some seats for their alliance partners, but so far there are no final decisions over the possible pre-poll alliance with Congress and other parties.

Sources also said that on the second day of the meeting, the state committee will review the reports of local committees and possibly will take some decision for a greater and united fight against BJP to restore democracy in the state.

While, party sources does not disclosed details of their meeting agenda and after the meeting, CPI (M) state Secretary Jitendra Chowdhury will highlight the issues discussed in the meeting during a press briefing on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Jitendra Chowdhury in a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) raises question over formation of Booth Awareness Groups (BAGs).

Chowdhury in his letter to CEO said that though the idea of formation of BAG is quite new and an important matter in ongoing election in Tripura and sorry to say, never this was discussed in any all party meeting held so far. However, CPI(M) raised its strong objection to the formation of such BAG on the grounds that there is already an awareness group working in each of the polling booths concerning BLO and BLAs of political parties. Chowdhury asked  then why it is necessary to be widened with the members of various social groups?

He said that the BLOs are directed to select names from various social groups namely, youths, social workers, educationist, NSS activists and NGOs etc. to include in the BAG. “Our experience is that most of the BLOs are working under duress due to constant threats from the ruling party activists to get illegal and unethical tasks done by them. Besides, some BLOs are very much obliged to the ruling party leaders. In such a condition, can you expect, the BLOs will pick up the persons from social groups with integrity and neutrality in each of the polling booths?”, said Chowdhury and added that they believe, practically it will be nothing but a booth committee sponsored by ruling party having seal of the Election Commission.

He also wanted to know what is the objective of formation of such BAG, what kinds of task will the BAG perform, the jurisdiction of their task etc nothing has been defined. He also requested the CEO to discard this idea of formation of BAG in each booth.