After Congress, CPI(M) goes for austerity

The CPI-M on Sunnday finalised a plan to rectify the "wrong trends" in the party under which guidelines were formulated for an austerity drive and to make its ministers more accountable.

New Delhi: The CPI-M on Sunnday finalised a plan
to rectify the "wrong trends" in the party under which
guidelines were formulated for an austerity drive and to make
its ministers more accountable.

The `rectification` document was given finishing touches
at the one-day meeting of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau which was
attended by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee, who had skipped several meetings of the party`s
central leadership in the recent weeks.

With party cadres raising complaints about the
functioning of ministers, CPI(M) sources said the Polit Bureau
came out with a guideline, which lists some Do`s and Don`ts,
for the ministers as well as MPs.

It is understood that as per the guideline the ministers
will be asked not to appoint relatives as their private staff
and if they do so, they will have to take the permission of
the leadership concerned.

The "rectification document" will be forwarded to Central
Committee for ratification. The Committee will meet here later
this month.

"All wrong trends in the party will be rectified. The
rectification will be done at all levels," Polit Bureau member
M K Pandhe told reporters.

The CPI(M) will also ask its cadre and leaders not to
adopt a neo-liberal lifestyle and go for austerity measures.

Specific details of the party`s version of austerity were
not immediately known. But the party took a dig at the
Congress "style" of austerity.

"We have seen the austerity of Congress style. The style
in which an MP buys an economy class, sits in an economy class
till the flight takes off and then move to business class.

"This is not the style of austerity which we are
talking about," CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury
told reporters.

Bureau Report

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