New Delhi | CPI general secretary D Raja has written to the leaders of major Left parties, urging them to convene a meeting in New Delhi at the earliest to discuss the challenges confronting the Left movement and chart a common course of action, sources said on Wednesday.
According to the sources, Raja has written to the general secretaries of major Left parties -- CPI-M's M A Baby, CPI(ML) Liberation's Dipankar Bhattacharya, Forward Bloc's G Devarajan and RSP's Manoj Bhattacharya -- and a date for the meeting would be finalised soon.
An informal meeting of the leaders of the CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(ML) Liberation is also likely to be held before that.
Raja has proposed that a meeting of Left leaders be held in Delhi in the first week of June, describing such a discussion as both "timely and necessary".
According to the sources, in his letter, Raja has said the country is passing through a "challenging political, economic and social situation", and noted that despite widespread concerns over unemployment, inflation, labour precarity and rising inequality, Left parties have not been able to effectively persuade large sections of the population about the need for a Left and democratic alternative.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) leader has also expressed concern over the electoral setbacks suffered by Left parties in recent years, as well as what he described as a relative decline in sustained mass struggles and difficulties in attracting and politically inspiring younger generations. These developments, he said, require "serious introspection and collective deliberation" by all Left forces.
Arguing that the present political situation demands a united intervention, Raja has asserted that the Left must project itself as a credible and fighting alternative, capable of mobilising people against unemployment, price rise, privatisation, attacks on workers and peasants, and policies that favour "crony capital".
He has called on the leaders to come together to assess the current situation and collectively evolve a strategy to rebuild the Left as a powerful force.
The initiative comes in the wake of the Left's setback in the recently-held Kerala Assembly polls, where the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) defeated the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
The UDF won 102 seats in the 140-member Assembly, while the LDF was reduced to 35 seats. The defeat left the Left parties without a government in any Indian state for the first time in nearly five decades, highlighting the broader decline in their national political influence.
The Kerala poll results have triggered discussions within Left circles on the need for introspection and organisational renewal. Leaders of both the CPI and the CPI(M) have described the poll outcome in the southern state as a serious setback and indicated that a review of the reasons behind the defeat would be undertaken.
