NEW DELHI: What was imminent for more than a year has now become reality. Harkishan Sigh Surjeet the 76-yr-old die hard communist leader has taken over as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from EMS Namboodiripad who has stepped down on account of poor health after being in office for 15 years.

Surjeet associated with the party since 1934 is the first general secretary of the CPI (M) from the north. He will be heading a “new look” politburo into which relatively younger party leaders have been drafted in with an eye on the future.

The most significant additions to the politburo -now increased to 17 are Prakash Karat and Siram Yechury both former student leaders from the one-time communist bastion of Jawaharlal Nehru University Yechuryat39 is the youngest-ever politburo member of the CPI(M) while Karat upped the 40-year mark. Both were drafted into the central committee in 1984.

Of the earlier 11 politburo members only Samar Mukherjee has been dropped. But his exclusion from the highest decision-making body of the Communist Party cannot be viewed as a move to sideline the veteran leader as he has been elected convener of the control commissions which have been given more teeth by the 14th Congress that ended its seven-day session here on Thursday.

Yechury said the party had decided that the members of the commission henceforth to be directly elected by the congress and not by the central committee should not be a party of the decision-making bodies since one of its jobs was to look into grievances of party cadre against the leadership.

Close to 600 delegates to the congress from various states of the country first elected 63 members to the central committee. “There were no dramatic changes in the committee with only two being dropped and five new faces drafted in The most significant of these changes was the inclusion of Ananda Pathak the CPI(M) leader from Darjeeling.

After its election the new central committee went in to a huddle and later Jyoti Basu announced the election of Surjeet. He also announced the names of the politburo members.

Besides Karat and Yochury the other new members are EK Nayanar former chief minister of Kerala S. Ramchandra Pillai Sunil Maitra P Ram chandran and Sailen Dasgupta.

All of them will form the core of the emerging leadership of the CPl (M).

Newly-elected committee member Yechury said the first decision on the central committee would to appoint a new central secretariat to assist the politburo as all the five members had been elevated to the politburo.

The entire exercise is being undertaken keeping the future in mind as the average age of the previous politburo is 70 years while that of the new entrants is slightly above 50. Clearly the new members of the secretariat will also be appointed with the view to groom them for more responsibilities in future.

It has been speculated that some veteran politburo members like Namboodiripad Basavapunnaiah Nripen Chakraborty might step down However CPI (M) leaders have ruled this out as the move might send wrong signals among its cadre. The aim is thus to infuse fresh blood while retaining the veterans as figureheads.

In this content it is widely felt Surjeets appointment is a stopgap arrangement and that the mantle is slowly being passed on to younger hands.

However the CPI (M) has yet again failed to project a woman as national leader. It had been expected that either Subhashini Ali or Brinda Karat would be inducted into the central committee but the leadership obviously feels that they do not yet have the experience.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 24, 1992