Pinarayi govt in Kerala escaped party checks; the campaign became personality-driven: CPI(M) admits

On Monday, the CPI(M) Central Committee released its review of the Kerala Assembly election results. A key self-criticism in the document, adopted at the committee's meeting earlier this month, was its explicit acknowledgement that lapses in the party's oversight of the Pinarayi Vijayan government had contributed to the electoral debacle.

Notably, until now, the CPI(M) had publicly maintained that anti-incumbency and public anger against the Pinarayi government were not the primary reasons for its defeat. The Central Committee's review marks a significant departure from that position. Here are the key criticisms the committee makes of the party's state leadership for failing to effectively monitor the functioning of the Pinarayi Vijayan government.

The CC observed that when the party led governments earlier, it routinely constituted sub-committees to monitor the implementation of schemes by government departments. The report also observes that there was also a functioning party cabinet fraction committee that discussed issues and guided the work of ministers. These mechanisms ensured proper coordination between the party and the government in the past, allowed detailed discussion of political issues, helped prevent the government from committing mistakes, and stopped allies or opponents from questioning the party’s politics.  The review implies these mechanisms were not functioning regularly or effectively during the recent term, allowing problems to arise unchecked. In other words, there were no proper checks and balances from the party leadership over the Pinarayi government.

The state review report earlier noted that the party could have avoided reading the message of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in the Global Ayyappa Sangamam. “Reading out the message of the UP chief minister, an avowed Hindutva fanatic, by a minister who is also a member of the state secretariat was a major embarrassment to the party’s secular image and had an adverse impact on our election campaign. Even if the programme was organised by the Devaswom Board, it was perplexing how a message was solicited from the UP CM and how a party minister agreed to read it out. Such an act sent a wrong message to the people and conveyed an impression that we are soft towards Hindutva communal forces,” observes the CC.

The CC report cites the PM-SHRI episode—where the government first signed the agreement and later had to backtrack owing to pressure from ally CPI—as an example of how the the party’s monitoring mechanism failed and led to an avoidable controversy. Interestingly, in the PM SHRI episode, the state review report had blamed the CPI. “Just before the declaration of elections, CPI brought up the controversy related to PM SHRI. This was helpful to the UDF's propaganda campaign that an undercurrent exists with the BJP. Lapses in deciding matters by conducting proper discussion on this issue also led to the formation of a problem of this nature,” said the state leadership’s review.

However, CC noticed that it was very important to take all LDF partners into confidence in the matter. “It was through the active intervention of the all India centre and the state leadership that the issue with the CPI could be resolved. However, the entire episode was utilised by the UDF to spread canards that our party had a deal with the BJP. Such unwanted controversies could have been avoided by ensuring that the party properly monitored the government and its functioning,” CC self-critically observes.

Interestingly, the committee's review could be read as an implicit—but carefully calibrated—acknowledgement that a personality cult had developed around Vijayan and that had ultimately backfired. The report identifies the decision to centre the assembly election campaign on the former chief minister as both a political and tactical error, arguing that it handed the UDF an easy target while blunting the Left's broader political offensive. At the same time, however, the CC balanced the criticism by crediting Vijayan with leading the government efficiently.

"By personalising the campaign and centering it around Com. Vijayan, we unwittingly gave an opportunity to the UDF to conduct a targeted campaign against him. Consequently, we have lost the political initiative to expose the reactionary, ruling class bias of the Congress party and the UDF," the report says.

The state committee report had observed that there was widespread resentment among CPI(M) cadres and the public over the high-handedness of the police and sections of the bureaucracy during Vijayan's tenure. It also noted the inaccessibility of some CPI(M) ministers and the government's excessive reliance on officials. According to the report, a large section of the party cadre came to believe that, since everything revolved around the government machinery, there was little need for them to actively engage with people or work towards resolving their grievances.

"Instead of actively working among the people by identifying their problems and working for their resolution, our mass and class organisations left it to the officials. As a result, the party lost its sharpness as a defender of the interests of our basic classes, a fundamental identity of our Party," the CC observed.

The CC further advised that, even while leading a government, the party should not prevent its mass organisations from taking up people's issues and mobilising public support. "We need to self-critically accept that this practice was largely neglected during the last ten years of the LDF government, due to which sections of the people drifted away from our Party," the report says.