Kolkata: The CPI-M, at the conclusion of its 27th state conference on Tuesday, announced the new 80-member state committee in West Bengal with Politburo member Md Salim unanimously re-elected state Secretary for a second term.
The 80-member state committee includes 14 women. A total of 11 new faces were inducted into the committee.
The interesting factor was that the present West Midnapore district secretary and former heavyweight minister Sushanta Ghosh was not just removed from his post but also dropped from the state committee altogether.
Speculations were rife about the fate of Ghosh for quite some time after a complaint against him was filed with the party by a local woman. After the complaint was received, the party leadership asked Ghosh not to participate in any party-related activity for the time being.
However, he was not dropped from the state committee, and the leadership instead decided to wait till the state conference to take that decision. Finally, as the list of members of the newly appointed state committee was released on Tuesday afternoon, Ghosh’s name was not there.
Besides Ghosh, two veteran party leaders, namely Ashok Bhattacharya and Jibesh Sarkar, were also dropped from the party because of their age. Bhattacharya was the Municipal Affairs & Urban Development minister in the erstwhile Left Front regime.
Party’s Rajya Sabha member and senior Calcutta High Court advocate, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, was also dropped from the state committee on age grounds.
Although expected, no one from the youth and student wings from the party was included in the new state committee. Political observers feel that since the new state committee will be leading the party for the crucial West Bengal Assembly elections in 2026, in all probability the leadership refrained from much of the revolutionary experiments in the selection of the new committee. (IANS)
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