Thiruvananthapuram: Extreme mismatch bet-ween social composition of total party members and the composition of the state and district committee members continue in CPM including Kerala state leadership.
While Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes constitute more than 28 per cent of the total party membership in the country, the representation of SCs in state and district committees is just 8.47 per cent and 15.45 per cent and STs 5.77 and district committees 6.13 per cent respectively.
The party plenum held in Kolkata in 2016 had discussed the issue in detail and asked the central and state committees to take proper organisational measures to scale up representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in district and state leadership. But three years down the line, the party has not achi-eved much success on this front.
In Kerala, the Scheduled Castes constitute 16.5 per cent of total party membership. But only a handful of leaders from the SC community are in the state committee. The representation in district committees is also very low. The CPM documents suggest that the situation in other states is no different. For instance in Punjab, 44.5 per cent of party members are Scheduled Castes but their representation in state committee is just five, in West Bengal total members from SC communities is 23.1 per cent but just four are in state committee. A section of CPM leaders said these figures were brought out as part of the plenum in 2016, the situation on the ground has not changed much.
A couple of years ago the CPM had constituted Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch (DSMM) a national level outfit to take up issues of the Scheduled Castes and mobilise these sections for fighting against atrocities. The party leaders are hopeful of attracting more people from the marginalised sections to the organisational fold by raising their issues and joining their struggles.
However, many believe that a significant policy shift is needed in CPM to provide adequate representation to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the leadership.
