Ismail aides purged from CPI executive

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kanam Rajendran, who was elected the CPI state secretary by sidelining senior leader K E Ismail, opted for a Stalinist purge on Saturday to assert his control over the party state unit. He could influence the state council to elect a state executive that acts to his tunes and to scrap the state secretariat. In the process, several leaders owing allegiance to Ismail lost their positions in the executive.
Party sources said the state council had to go for voting to decide if it needed a nine-member secretariat to oversee the party's daily functioning. Rajendran and leaders close to him were of the view that a refined executive can discharge the functions of a secretariat. It's learnt that 48 council members voted against forming a secretariat while 20 members supported it.
A 21-member state executive was elected by the state council. K Prakash Babu and Satyan Mokeri were elected assistant secretaries. C Divakaran, the parliamentary party leader, was inducted back into the executive, from where he was demoted following the Bennet Abraham candidature row.
The 31-member executive was trimmed to a 21-member body by ousting leaders like M P Achuthan MP, P S Supal, V P Unnikrishnan, R Latha Devi, T V Balan and A Sivarajan -- all of them Ismail loyalists. N Rajan, P Prasad, V B Binu and Chinchu Rani are the new faces in the executive.
Prasad, the party choice for Pathanamthitta district secretary, was rejected by the district conference earlier. The leadership gave a strong message to dissidents by elevating him to the state executive. Senior leader Pannyan Raveendran, Ismail and Binoy Viswam opted out of the executive as they can attend it as national executive members.
Ismail loyalist C N Chandran, who completed two terms as assistant secretary, was replaced by Satyan Mokeri, a confidant of Rajendran. Sources said Rajendran decided to act tough against the Ismail camp following the untoward incidents at Puducherry party congress. There was a tussle among delegates from Kerala in selecting nominees to national council.
It was a tactical move to re-induct Divakaran in the executive as winning his support could help Rajendran cut rivals to size in the future too. P Ramachandran Nair and Venjaramoodu Sasi, who faced action along with Divakaran, had left the party.