THE Plenum on Organisation began with a massive rally on December 27 morning at Brigade Parade Grounds. The rally reverberated with slogans of  ‘We shall fight, we shall win,’ and vowed to fight against the anti-people policies and terror regime in West Bengal and the communal machinations and terror of the Sangh Parivar in the country.

delegate session of the Plenum started in the evening on December 27 and continued till December 31 afternoon. It was held at the Promode Dasgupta  Bhawan in Kolkata.

A five-member presidium consisting of Manik Sarkar (chairperson), E Kareem, Ramachandra Dom, U Vasuki and Badal Saroj was elected to conduct the proceedings of the plenum.

The Report on Organisation was placed by Prakash Karat, Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M). He said that this Plenum on Organisation is being held at a crucial juncture for our Party. If we have to overcome setbacks and expand and build the CPI(M) as an all India Party with mass base all over the country, then revamping our organisation and giving a new direction to the class and mass organisations, is essential.     

Prakash Karat said that the 21st Congress of the Party held at Visakhapatnam in April 2015 has reviewed the political-tactical line pursued over the years and chalked out a new political-tactical line whose primary aim was to increase the independent strengthen of the Party; to unleash the class and mass struggles and to build the Left and Democratic Front which is essential for changing the correlation of forces, in order to advance towards People’s Democratic Revolution. He said, this is the framework in which we have to review our work. The political-tactical line has emphasised on the need to fight against the right-wing offensive, against aggressive pursuit of neo-liberal policies – the twin dangers which also pose authoritarian dangers. We have to gear up our Party organisation to undertake these tasks.  

The Congress had decided to hold a plenum on organisation to undertake the review of Party organisation at all levels, to review the work of mass organisations and to have a concrete study of the impact of the neo-liberal policies and on that basis provide new orientation and direction for class and mass organisations. The Congress underscored the need for revamping the organisation in order to equip it to undertake the tasks set out.

Explaining the background and the preparations made for the Plenum, Prakash Karat said that six months back, a detailed questionnaire was sent to all the state committees. The replies to this comprehensive questionnaire and the reports from the mass organisations forms the basis for the Report on Organisation, presented in the Plenum. The Polit Bureau held two rounds of discussions on it, before placing it at the Central Committee. The Central Committee met for four days in October and discussed the report. The Polit Bureau, then, finalised the draft and sent it to the state committees for their opinions and views. Some Central Committees held extended meetings for discussing this draft report. After receiving the views from state committees, the Polit Bureau has made some changes and the finalised draft is now put before the Plenum, he said.

The Report on Organisation is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the Party Organisation. The second part deals with the class and mass organisations with regard to their independent and democratic functioning. The third part deals with the three studies that were undertaken to study the impact of the neo-liberal policies on the working class, on the peasantry and on the urban and middle classes. The fourth part deals with the direction for the state committees on what needs to be done to strengthen the Party and the class and mass organisations.

Prakash Karat said that the Report details the current state of our Party organisation. He said this is not a review of the organisation of the last 37 years since the Salkia Plenum. When the CPI(M) was formed in 1964, the question of Party organisation was first  taken up at the Calicut Central Committee meeting in 1967, where the Tasks on Party Organisation were adopted. This marked a break with the revisionist ideas of organisation which had crept into the undivided communist party. Subsequently, we held Salkia Plenum in 1978, precisely on the same dates in which this Plenum is being held, from December 27-31.  But the background in which Salkia Plenum was held, was different, as the Party then was on the ascendancy, particularly in the immediate post-Emergency period and we adopted some slogans to commensurate and take forward and expand our growth. The 10th Congress of the Party held in 1978 reviewed the political-tactical line and made some changes to adopt to the changed circumstances. It felt that there was a need to gear-up the organisation to implement the political-tactical line adopted there, as a result of which the Salkia Plenum was held.

In the 14th Congress held in 1992, there was an indepth review of Salkia Plenum tasks and accordingly, the necessary direction and tasks were given on Party Organisation.

The period that is now under review, is the period after the onset of liberalisation, beginning with the implementation of neo-liberal policies, rise of communalism and international setback to socialism.

The major five tasks that have been spelt out in the Report are broadly,

1.                    Forge class and mass struggles

2.                    Adopt a mass line

3.                    Streamlining Party Organisation

4.                    Attract newer sections and youth to the party

5.                    Intensify ideological struggle

Prakash Karat underscored that the first major thrust in this Report is on mass line and changing our style of functioning that will enable us to have live links with the people. The style of work has to change from top to bottom rungs of the Party. The mass line is a two way process – to go to people and learn from them and to take our politics to masses. He said building a revolutionary party is the need of the hour and the key issue is to improve the quality of our membership. He emphasised on taking up social issues, especially in the Hindi speaking states. The ideological struggle campaign among people has to be stepped up. Parliamentarism has to be fought vigilantly. Activities in the cultural sphere, social services, etc, have to be stepped up.

The second day of the CPI(M)’s Plenum on Organisation  began with the introduction of the 'Draft Resolution on Organisation' by Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Party. He said that the neo-liberal offensive and communal onslaught can be fought only by strengthening our organisation as this is the only vehicle to ensure the reach of our political line to the people. He emphasised on new organisational methods to fulfil the tasks undertaken in the 21st Party Congress.

The draft Resolution lays down the need to strengthen and streamline the Party’s organisational capacities to meet the current challenges by unleashing mightier people’s struggles to develop the independent strength of the Party in conformity with the political-tactical line adopted at the 21st Congress of the Party. The Congress held at Visakhapatnam in April this year, had laid stress on forging the Left and Democratic Front.

The draft Resolution underlined the imperative to vastly develop the organisational capacities of the Party to enable it to accomplish these revolutionary objectives and emerge as the political party of the vast majority of the exploited classes in the objective situation of the world capitalist crisis and intensified exploitation. He said the CPI(M) has an alternative policy framework which will enable the Indian people “to realise their inherent potential and create a better India on that basis”. It offers the Indian youth a vision of a better future. It puts forward alternative policies that provide the youth with quality education, good health and sustainable employment.

Sitaram Yechury underscored the fact that the CPI(M) is a “consistent political force that advocates and struggles for the unity of our multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic population against all efforts at sharpening communal polarisation and thwarting the RSS/BJP designs to impose their project of a rabidly intolerant fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’”.

Towards achieving these tasks the draft calls upon the Party to address social issues in a big way, while simultaneously taking up the issues of economic exploitation and social oppression. Yechury said these are the two feet upon which stands the advance of class struggles in India.

Among the social issues identified for taking up by the entire Party are the struggle against gender oppression, discrimination against dalits, tribals, religious minorities and the disabled.

The draft also outlines the various methods that need to be employed to expand the influence of the Party and strengthen the Party organisation as its vision can only be materialised if the organisational capacities of the Party are strengthened enormously.

After the introduction of the draft Resolution, the discussions on the draft Report and Resolution began. The discussions on both these documents continued till the evening of December 30 for more than 19 hours.

A total of 62 delegates participated in the discussion over three days. P Rajeev from Kerala, Samik Lahiri from West Bengal, Narayan Kar from Tripura, GN Nagraj (Karnataka), Sudarshan (Telangana), Ajay Kumar (Bihar), Ashok Tiwary (Madhya Pradesh), Pragjibhai Bhambi (Gujarat), Surajit Sinha (Jharkhand), Kushal Bharadwaj (Himachal Pradesh), B Sanyal (Chattisgarh), Vijai Rawat (Uttarakhand), Sarat Salam (Manipur), N Gunasekharan (Tamilnadu), Y Venkateswara Rao (Andhra Pradesh), Rege (Maharshtra), Raghunath Singh (Punjab), Dulichand (Rajasthan), Ananta Deka (Assam), Dushmanta Das (Odisha), KM Tiwari & Anurag Saxena (Delhi), Inderjit Singh (Haryana), KG Das (Andaman & Nicobar), Harsev Bains (UK), Kulwant Deshi (Canada), KK Ragesh (Kerala),  Jiten Chaudhury (Tripura), Rama Biswas (West Bengal), Dinanath Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Gulam Nabi Mallick (Jammu & Kashmir), Jatin Naik (Goa), TN Seema (Kerala),  Divyajyoti Das (West Bengal), Jharna Das (Tripura), AA  Nainar (Tamilnadu), Jyoti (Telangana), Rama Devi (Andhra Pradesh), Ahmed Ali (Bihar), Varalakshmi (Karnataka), Sukhwinder Singh (Punjab), Suprakash Talukdar (Assam), Mariam Dhawale (Maharashtra), Santosh Das (Odisha), Ziaur Alam (West Bengal), Amal Chakrabarthy (Tripura), Ajit Navale (Maharashtra), Amiya Patra (West Bengal),
KN  Balagopal (Kerala), Balabarathi (Tamilnadu), AR Sindhu (trade union front), Viplab Majumdar (kisan front), Thirunavakkarasu (agriculture workers front), Malini Bhattacharjee (women’s front), Avoy Mukherjee (youth front), Ritabrata Majumdar (student front), G Mamatha (party media), Kiran Chandra (IT front), Leela (teachers front), Amit Sengupta (science front), MB Rajesh (youth front) and Sivadasan (student front) participated in the discussions.

A total of 191 amendments and suggestions were received to the draft Report on Organisation, of which 36 were accepted. There were 73 amendments and suggestions to the draft Resolution on Organisation, of which 6 were accepted.

Prakash Karat replied to the discussion on the draft Report on Organisation while Sitaram Yechury replied to the discussion on the draft Resolution on Organisation, after which, they were adopted by the Plenum. It was replied that the direction given by the Organisational Plenum will be implemented in a time bound manner by all the state committees in the forthcoming year and the CC will review its implementation at the end of the year.

On behalf of the Plenum, Chairperson of the Presidium, Manik Sarkar thanked the West Bengal state committee and through it the entire membership of the Party in West Bengal for the excellent arrangements that were made for the success of the Plenum.

A resolution to 'Commemorate the Centenary Year of the Great October Socialist Revolution' was moved by MA Baby, Polit Bureau member and was seconded by R Arun Kumar, permanent invitee to the Central committee. A resolution on the 'Achievements of the Left Front Government of Tripura' was moved by Brinda Karat and seconded by G Ramakrishnan, Polit Bureau members. A resolution on the 'Situation in West Bengal' was moved by Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Polit Bureau member and seconded by Ashok Dhawale, Central secretariat member. All the resolutions were adopted unanimously by the Plenum.