Kolkata, June 27: CPI(M)’s claim that it pressured Yashwant Sinha, the opposition candidate for Presidential poll, to resign as the Trinamool Congress national vice president does not seem convincing to a large section of party insiders.
This logic put forward by the party’s general secretary Sitaram Yechury is just an attempt to pacify the growing dissatisfaction within the party, especially in West Bengal, over the support to Yashwant Sinha considering that in West Bengal the party’s prime rival in Trinamool Congress.
These frustrated sections within the party have pointed out that it is a matter of tradition and convention that any person cannot be a member or a post-holder in any political party at the time of contesting presidential poll. They have also drawn reference to Late Pranab Mukherjee who resigned from the primary membership of Congress before contesting the presidential poll in 2012.
A central committee member of CPI(M) said on strict condition of anonymity that it is increasingly becoming difficult to convince the “comrades” at lower level to refrain from expressing their anguish over supporting Sinha’s candidature. “In fact, their logic to an extent is also correct since it is our party workers at the grassroots level who are facing the maximum atrocities in the hands of ruling party activists and police in West Bengal,” he said.
In fact, the grievance of the lower-level party activists on this count was fanned first by the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya, who is the sole Parliamentary representative in the party from West Bengal. He clearly said that the selection of Yashwant Sinha as the opposition candidate was not proper and he will accept the leadership’s decision like a bitter gourd.
First it was Sitaram Yechury, who through the party’s mouthpiece in Bengali, tried to explain under what circumstances the party had to accept Sinha’s candidature and he stressed that because of the insistence of CPI(M) Sinha had to resign from his party post in Trinamool Congress.
Even the party politburo member and the state secretary in West Bengal Dr Suryakanta Mishra has made an attempt on this count claiming currently Sinha is neither a BJP member nor a Trinamool Congress member, there is no harm in supporting his candidature. At the same time, he admitted the party had to support Sinha since the other politicians they proposed rejected the offer to contest.
