The newly-elected central committee of the CPI ML has unanimously re-elected party’s general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya for the fifth time in a row. Over 1,200 party delegates elected 77 new central committee members on the last day of the 11th party congress that concluded here on Monday night.

The panel of the new central committee unanimously elected Dipankar Bhattacharya over voice vote. The meeting of the committee is scheduled to be held in Kolkata on March 26-27. It will finally endorse its decision in Kolkata. It will also elect its new polit bureau members. Fresh responsibilities of each member will be decided in the Kolkata meeting.

Altogether, 1,700 delegates drawn from 27 states and Union Territories, 265 districts and over a dozen special guests had participated in the five-day congress.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday, Dipankar Bhattacharya said out of a total of 77 CC members, 13 new faces, including five women members, are elected. The five new female faces are: Farhad Banu from Rajasthan, Manju Prakash Bihar, Indrani Dutt from West Bengal, Sweta Raaj Delhi and Maitreya Krishnan from Karnataka.

Among the new faces, in the CC five are from Bihar. They are: Satyadev Ram, Sandeep Saurav ( both party MLAs) Kumar Parvez, Navin Kumar, Prakash Kumar ( all from Bihar). Niraj Kumar from Delhi, Indresh Maikhuri and Kailash Pandey from Uttarakhand have also been included in the CC for the first time, he said.

Dipankar also said that the representation of women in the central committee has gone up by 16 per cent this time. Raja Bahuguna has been made the chairman of the central control commission. Besides, five special members have also been elected.

He also said that the party has decided to wholeheartedly participate in the Mahagathabandhan rally at Rangbhumi maidan in bordering Purnia on February 25 in which main partners of Mahagathbandhan will participate to desist the fascist forces in the state. This would be the first major rally of the mahagathabandhan against fascist forces ahead of 2024 general election. The CPIML leaders and party workers will participate in the big way, he informed.

It may be mentioned here that the Union Home Minister Amit shah will also address the party workers and farmers meeting in Patna on the same day after visiting Valmikinagar in West Champaran. He will be addressing on the occasion of the birth anniversary of the famous Kisan leader and a freedom fighter Swami Sahajanand Saraswati.

The former JDU leader and national president of the newly floated party-RLSP Upendra Kushwaha has also decided to go to every nook and corner of Bihar soon to garner support.  Khushwaha’s proposed Yatra is yet another step to win over the confidence of the people particularly OBCs, party sources said.

The division in the Luv( Kurmi) and Kush( Kushwaha)  combination has been viewed as the sharp division in the vote bank of CM Nitish Kumar.

Currently, the BJP has adopted a wait-and-watch policy although Kushwaha’s rejection of Tejshwi Prasad Yadav as the next CM candidate has brought him closer to the BJP. But nothing can be said in politics. Anything can happen, said a senior JDU leader.