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Journalism of Courage
Less than 24 hours of V S Achuthanandan accusing party owned TV channel Kairali of conspiring to slander him, and his feud with party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan now threatening to turn into full-scale war, the CPI(M) Politburo threw itself into the salvage job on Friday.
Kairali had gone on to air the second part of the controversial interview even after VS raised cain over the first part. The state CPI(M) secretariat in Pinarayi Vijayan’s control issued a statement on Friday lauding the channel, and claimed that it would not close itself to airing different views.
A worried CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat summoned A Vijayaraghavan, the CPI(M) MP on the Kairali board, and reportedly obtained a detailed explanation about the channel airing a two-part interview with a businessman of dubious reputation considered close to Vijayan, in which he attempted to claim that VS was in touch with him, too.
Party sources said the Politburo sought the transcripts of the two-hour long interview, to study before taking a stance.
The firefighting followed the VS camp shooting off a detailed missive to the national leadership questioning the party channel’s motives, and insisting that the other faction was using every means to get back at VS. Party sources said with the Chief Minister running the Left Government and the party secretary steadily moving further away from a rapproachment, the Politburo, which had tried everything including suspending the two from the Politburo, was now preparing for an unprecedented direct involvement in the Kerala party’s running “till things stabilise”.
The sources, however, ruled out any immediate prospect of the central leadership rocking the boat by asking both or either of the two factional leaders to step down from their positions. They said Karat and Politburo member S Ramachandra Pillai would play a “significant role” in exploring a solution to the snowballing factional crisis at the party state committee meeting next week. The Politburo was now likely to “more directly supervise” the party’s local conferences in the run up to the state conference, considering the volatile shape the factional battle is now taking, they added.
