CPM to unleash campaign

KANNUR: The CPM is all set to launch a massive firefighting operation, as the party has found itself driven to the wall following the inhuman murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T P Chandrasekharan at Onchiyam, and the consequent wave of public sympathy likely to cause erosion of faith in the rank  and file of the party.In a vigorous bid to regain its lost ground and retain the ‘credulous’ section of the rank and file in the party fold, the CPM is planning to organise a series of  official meetings of party functionaries and public programmes. General secretary of the party, Prakash Karat, himself is scheduled to come to Kalliassery on Saturday to inaugurate the 8th death anniversary meeting of the late party leader E K Nayanar. The Nayanar death anniversary is all set to be an occasion to reassert the strength of the party, according to the leadership of the CPM. The Nayanar memorial meet, certainly, has provided an occasion to organise programmes to energise the party cadres.A volunteer march and procession scheduled to take place at the red village of Kalliassery as part of the programmes are designed to inspire the young cadres of the party, besides countering the ‘vicious right campaign against the party’. The late E K Nayanar was known as the biggest crowd-puller of the CPM, but whether Prakash Karat, with his highly polished English language speech, could rise upto the occasion in the wake of the crisis facing the party, is difficult to predict. A district rally of the CPM is also scheduled to be held at the Kannur Collectorate Maidan on May 21 as part of the fire-fighting job now underway in the party. Though the party leadership is eager to publicise the programmes and seek the massive participation of the people, they seem to be at a loss to state the immediate reason for the whole exercise. “We have been observing Nayanar memorial programmes every year, and there is nothing new in this years’ activities,” was how a party leader explained it.The CPM citadel here has been finding itself more and more on the defensive in the Chandrasekharan murder case as the special investigation team of the police is coming up with fresh evidence and subsequent arrests of party functionaries at the local level every day.The district leadership of the CPM here is facing a serious credibility problem as it couldn’t easily explain away the developments that followed the brutal murder of Chandrasekharan and the findings of the police probe  relating to the involvement of some of the party workers in the heinous crime.Although the murder took place beyond their territory, the Kannur lobby of the CPM has been at the receiving end  ever since the murder of Chandrasekharan.