Veteran leader A B Bardhan was re-elected as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India for the fourth consecutive term on Thursday.
The election of the octogenarian leader for the yet another three-year term was announced on the concluding day of the 20th Congress of the party held in Hyderabad.
Briefing newsmen, Bardhan said that a new national council has been elected with 125 full members and 13 candidate members. "We have included 20 per cent new members, which fulfils our requirement," he said and added that 30 are fresh faces.
He pointed out that a nine-member central control commission has also been elected. The new council met and elected a 31-member national executive, including five new members, namely, Syed Aziz Pasha from AP, C Divakaran, N A Raja, Pallab Sengupta and Dr Kango.
Bardhan said that the MP from Nalgonda in AP, Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy was elected as deputy general secretary of the party, a post that has been revived after a gap of nine years.
The party Congress also elected a nine-member secretariat, comprising Bardhan, Sudhakar Reddy, D Raja, Gurudas Dasgupta, Nandagopal Bhattacharya, C K Chandrappan, Shameem Faizee, Atul Kumar Anjan and Amarjeet Kaur.
The party constitution has also been amended. One of the key amendments stipulates that a person cannot hold the office of party general secretary for more than four terms.
A number of amendments were suggested to the 20th Congress' draft political resolution and some of these were rejected.
Answering questions, Bardhan said that the reference to Telangana issue in the political resolution was 'redrafted and re-written' after the matter was discussed in detail.
The draft resolution had mentioned that "the demand for carving out a separate state of Telengana has grown among the people of that region. Taking note of this growing demand, the CPI supports the formation of Telangana."
This was being modified as some delegates had vociferously opposed the separate Telangana state while some others had strongly supported the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
Referring to media reports that he was pushed down by some activists of separate Telangana movement who had intruded into the in-camera meeting of the party on Wednesday night, Bardhan said that the reportage was 'exaggerated and distorted.'
He said that some persons came inside the meeting hall and started distributing pamphlets in support of Telangana state.
"I caught hold of them and the Red Guards (party volunteers) took them away. Nobody hit me or pushed me down. Nothing dramatic happened," he added.
