Kolkata, April 1 (IANS) With the 24th Party Congress of the CPI-M scheduled to start at the temple town of Madurai in Tamil Nadu from Wednesday, fresh speculations have surfaced over the party’s new General Secretary – a post which had been lying vacant since the demise of incumbent, Sitaram Yechury, last year.

Speculations have surfaced over the schedule of speakers announced so far who will be delivering addresses at the “open session” at the closing day of the Party Congress on April 6.

The name of the new or continuing General Secretary is always included as a speaker of that particular session at the end of the Party Congress every time.

However, as per the schedule of the list of speakers that has been fixed so far, four of the existing Politburo members, who are on the list of speakers at the “open session”, have crossed 75 and hence are supposed to retire from the Politburo.

They are the current Politburo coordination member and former party General Secretary Prakash Karat, his wife Brinda Karat, current Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, and G. Ramakrishnan. The fifth scheduled speaker of the “open session”, which will be coordinated by the party’s state secretary in Tamil Nadu, P. Shanmugam, is prominent woman trade union leader U. Vasaki, who is not a Politburo member as yet.

From that point, speculation had surfaced over the name of the new General Secretary, while the possibilities of Vijayan and Vasuki are not there at all.

However, a Central Committee member of the CPI-M from West Bengal said, it is also possible anyone who is not scheduled as a speaker for the open session as yet might be elected as the General Secretary, and their name will be included in the list of speakers for the open session at the last moment.

“In the past, the name of any new General Secretary was more or less a foregone conclusion even before the beginning of the party Congress. But this time the situation is different and lots of discussions are going on over more than one name as the new General Secretary,” he added.

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.

Of the three, Salim has already expressed his desire to stick to his home state and work for the revival of the party, and the other two are reportedly not very popular with Vijayan, the only Chief Minister of the party.

–IANS

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