VS Achuthanandan VS Achuthanandan

The CPM's 21st state conference in Kerala, which began on Friday, got reduced to a dirty, last-ditch fight between former chief minister VS Achuthanandan and his bte noire and outgoing party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

Achuthanandan walked out of the conference on Saturday morning and went home, just a couple of kilometres from the venue, and resolutely stayed behind closed doors. It left the party leadership, including Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, scrambling to save face and appease the veteran Marxist, the only living member of the 32 leaders who left the CPI and formed the CPM in 1964.

The CPM's Politbureau and its Central Committee reportedly held discussions on how to bring Achuthanandan around. Vijayan himself reportedly got in touch with two of Achuthanandan's confidants to find a middle ground.

The internal war in the last big stronghold of the CPM does not bode well for the party, which is celebrating its 50 years and is gearing for a change in leadership at the party congress in Vishakhapatnam in April this year. In Kerala, Vijayan is likely to be succeeded by Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

The rift between Vijayan and VS had reached a tipping point on the eve of the state conference. An alternative draft that Achuthanandan had sent to the politbureau, criticising Vijayan, got leaked and was printed in a Malayalam newspaper.

In retaliation Vijayan, in his last press conference as party secretary, said the party's state secretariat had passed a resolution, denouncing Achuthanandan for "anti-party" activities. That seemed like the last nail in the coffin.

Vijayan was still unrelenting as he presented the organisation report on Friday: he used the occasion to lambast Achuthanandan for trying to break up the party, and for hounding him with allegations of corruption. When the conference reportedly continued in the same vein on Saturday, Achuthanandan told Karat that he is leaving and walked out.

Achuthanandan is unlikely to leave the party. He is too shrewd a politician for that. He knows that outside the party he could meet the same dismal fate of many tall leaders who were thrown out of the party and got reduced to a shadow of their former political selves and became insignificant in state politics.

He is more likely to use this opportunity to hit back at Vijayan, to show that he has not been knocked out, to shore up some political significance. But this battle of individuals has weakened the party, that too at a time when the BJP is quietly as well as overtly trying to gain ground in a state where they have never won a seat.