CPI-M plenum to stress deepening links with people: Yechury

Describing the CPI-M as a "revolutionary party with a mass line", its general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Saturday said the five-day party plenum beginning on Sunday would lay stress on deepening its links with the people and discuss ways to attract the youth.

Yechury also said the meet would take the movement forward to attain the unachieved goals of the plenum held 37 years back in Salkia in Howrah.

"We had taken many decisions in Salkia which we have not been able to achieve. There are reasons which we had noted in Salkia as much as we are emphasising now," Yechury told the media on the eve of the party plenum here.

He said many of the goals set out in the Salkia plenum have not been "attained satisfactorily".

"That's why this plenum has been convened in order to take the movement forward to attain much of that."

Asked about the party's incapability to penetrate the Hindi heartland, Yechury said the party needs to take up issues of social oppression along with those concerning economic exploitation.

"Unless we take up social issues, the reality which we have understood and we have articulated in the previous party Congress is that class struggles in India stand on two feet -- one is economic exploitation, the other is social exploitation.

"The oppression of Dalits, tribals, religious minorities and (those based on) gender, all these issues must be taken up simultaneously along with the economic exploitation issue.

"Whatever weaknesses were there in this process, that is what we wish to correct in this plenum," said Yechury.

The plenum would deliberate on ways to "deepen our links with the masses and make them stronger", he said.

"That is why what we are saying now is that ours is a revolutionary party with a mass line."

Stating that the party has no future without the presence of youth, he said this issue will be discussed at the plenum.

"That (attracting the youth) will be discussed in the plenum. But remember, age also has to merge with experience. Don't draw these rigid lines. The point is India is a country of youth. Seventy percent of Indians are below the age of 40. Without youth, nobody has a future... CPI-M also doesn't have a future (without youth)," he said.