THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Firm intervention by the CPI(M) Polit Bureau has helped avert a major showdown in the Kerala unit of the party.

With the Polit Bureau putting its foot down, the CPI(M) State committee concluded its three-day meeting here on Friday without going in for any massive purge over alleged factional activities in connection with the Malappuram conference of the party held over a year ago.

The party committee, which had taken up two inquiry reports into factionalism in connection with the last State conference submitted by two Commissions headed by party Central committee members, was expected to come down heavily on at least the Ernakulam and Palakkad district committees and some prominent leaders, most of them belonging to the Achuthanandan faction.

Information leaked

However, with the Polit Bureau members firmly opposing any such course of action, the committee limited its disciplinary measures to expulsion of two persons who had functioned as additional private secretaries to V.S. Achuthanandan when he was the Leader of the Opposition on the basis of the finding that they had leaked party-related information to the media, and an appeal to district-level leaders found to have been involved in factionalism to rectify their mistakes.

A pressnote issued by the CPI(M) State committee after the meeting said the committee had decided to expel K.M. Shajahan and P.T. Muralidharan (former additional private secretaries to Mr. Achuthanandan) from the party, suspend M. Radhakrishnan, an employee at the AKG Centre, for six months and censure Assain Karat and Tom Panackal, two other party members, on the basis of the P. Karunakaran Commission's finding that they were responsible for "naked leak of information during the Malappuram State conference and deliberate concoction of news reports." The decision to initiate disciplinary action against them was taken unanimously by the State committee, the press note said.

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