Crucial five day Kerala CPI-M party meeting starts Sunday

Thiruvananthapuram -  The five-day meet of the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) starts here Sunday.

Five politburo members, including party general secretary Prakash Karat, will take part in the meeting.

Several internal issues, three murder cases where the party is facing the heat and the two by-election losses are some of the issues that will dominate the meet.

"Yes, of course. All issues that have attracted media attention in the recent past will come up before the state secretariat which will meet the first two days and then the state committee will meet for the next three days," said a top party official who did not want to be identified.

Among the most serious issues that would be taken up would be the brutal murder of former party colleague T.P. Chandrasekheran that took place May 4 near Kozhikode. More than a dozen of the arrested in the case are closely associated with the CPI-M.

In another murder case, the Kannur district secretary and former CPI-M legislator P. Jayarajan has already been questioned once and the police have decided to call him again.

The stand off between state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and V.S. Achuthanandan, which has reached a flash point, is another issue that has been bogging the party for long. Achuthanandan, after the murder of Chandrasekheran had slammed Vijayan and remarked that he would meet the fate of S.A. Dange (the once iconic Indian communist who was later thrown out of the party).

After Friday's result of the Neyattinakara assembly by-election -- where R. Selvaraj, a two-time CPI-M legislator who in March resigned as legislator and quit the party, later joined the Congress and won the polls, former Finance Minister and senior CPI-M legislator Thomas Issac openly admitted that issues in their party have to be resolved.

"We will certainly introspect on what's happening in the party with an open mind in the light of the recent happenings," said Issac.