View source for Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM)

= West Bengal=
==2018: old guard makes way for younger leaders==
[https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2018%2F03%2F09&entity=Ar01903&sk=4D8A6692&mode=text  West Bengal CPM old guard makes way for young blood, March 9, 2018: ''The Times of India'']


''Buddhadeb, Asim Are Now Just Advisers''

Before the 2011 assembly election, which marked the end of the Left Front government’s 34-year rule, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Nirupam Sen and Asim Dasgupta were the number one-two-three in the West Bengal cabinet.

Bhattacharjee and Dasgupta bowed out of the CPM State Committee and joined Sen as permanent invitees as advisory members without voting rights.

Thursday marked the end of an era for CPM as politburo member Biman Bose, at 77, ended up the only survivor from the post-Jyoti Basu and Promode Dasgupta generation of leaders from when the party was known as “the Party” — with a capital P.

Bhattacharjee, who has acute respiratory problems, has been pleading with party colleagues to spare him from the central and state committees. But party leaders, including CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, insisted he stay as an invitee, with Bhattacharjee’s presence largely “inspirational and strategic” if not “ornamental.”

The winds of change in the party, which gave the world its longest-serving democratically elected communist government, did not leave the state secretariat untouched either. Two key organisers, Shyamal Chakrabarty and Madan Ghosh, opted out of the new state committee announced at the end of the party’s state conference in Kolkata on Thursday. Another state secretariat member, Dipak Sarkar, former minister Kanti Ganguly, and former MP Basudeb Acharia, all handed the baton to younger colleagues, remaining in advisory capacity on the panel.

The new state committee brought in some fresh blood, though women’s representation in the 80-member panel remains a measly 10. Bengal CITU president Subhas Mukherjee, aged 60, is possibly the oldest among the inclusions in the new state committee.