Deleted Facebook post from 'Anthoor Sakhakkal' exposes simmering dissent in CPM's Taliparamba bastion

Kannur: Signs of a political churn are emerging in CPM’s stronghold of Taliparamba, where rebel leader T K Govindan has pitched his fight as a referendum on the party’s internal democracy, or the lack of it.

Even as he takes on the party’s official candidate, P K Shyamala, a section of CPM supporters from her hometown of Anthoor has turned to social media to voice unusually sharp criticism of the leadership. While the criticism does not exactly amount to an endorsement of T K Govindan’s candidature, the lengthy post flags the same issues he has raised during the campaign, including the erosion of internal democracy and the party’s drift into a personal fiefdom of a few leaders.

The candidature of Shyamala, wife of CPM State secretary M V Govindan, had faced criticism within the party at the district secretariat, district committee and the Taliparamba mandalam committee. Despite this, the leadership went ahead with her nomination, prompting T K Govindan, the seniormost member of the district secretariat, to revolt and contest against her with UDF backing.

A Facebook page, ‘Anthoor Sakhakkal’, otherwise supportive of the CPM, has now flagged what it describes as a structural malaise within the party. In a long post, it warned that branding dissenters as BJP sympathisers was steadily alienating cadres and creating the very drift the leadership claims to resist. “To those who say criticism must be raised within the appropriate forum, there is no such forum left now,” the post said, alleging that even basic internal mechanisms had withered. It further claimed that members who questioned local leaders were removed from the party without due process or discussion at the branch level.

The post, while not naming individuals, pointed to the emergence of hyper-local power centres and accused an area committee member of running the party like a personal fiefdom. “What is happening in Taliparamba and elsewhere? Is it time to drop the ‘M’ from CPI(M) and replace it with the first letter of each local committee?

“Our fight is not against the party, comrades. It is against leaders like these. They are the ones you must correct,” it said, echoing the words of CPM whistleblower and UDF-backed independent candidate in Payyannur, V Kunhikrishnan. Unless the party course-corrects, it risks ceding ground to rival political and communal forces, ‘Anthoor Sakhakkal’ warned.

What makes the intervention significant is not just its content, but also where it has emerged. Anthoor, where the CPM has long enjoyed near-total dominance, winning all 29 municipal divisions in the last local body polls, including five unopposed, has rarely witnessed public dissent of this nature. It is also the home turf of party chief M V Govindan and Taliparamba candidate P K Shyamala. That such criticism has surfaced, despite the risks associated with speaking out, underscores a growing unease among sections of the cadre.

The post also highlights a generational fault line. “Those who keep repeating that youth must be brought into the party, what youth have they actually included?” it asks, pointing to the widening gap between an ageing leadership and younger aspirants who find themselves excluded from decision-making and, at times, even membership.

The party is learnt to have intervened following internal discussions, directing the page administrators to remove the post. It was later replaced with a message critical of T K Govindan, with the authors clarifying that they do not support him. However, the unease has now come out into the open.