K Balakrishnan succeeds G Ramakrishnan as CPM secretary

Thoothukudi: The farmers’ wing president of the CPI (M) Tamil Nadu state committee K Balakrishnan succeeded G. Ramakrishnan as the party's state secretary at the 22nd Tamil Nadu state conference of the CPI (M) in Thoothukudi on Tuesday. On the final day of the four-day conference of the CPM, 81 members were elected for the state committee and the newly elected members of the state committee unanimously elected K Balakrishnan as its new Tamil Nadu secretary.  A new state executive committee called as the party's secretariat comprising of 15 members too was elected at the party's state conference, presided by the party's national general secretary, Sitaram Yechury.

Meanwhile, six persons including a five-year-old boy and two policemen were injured in a clash between CPM cadres and the police at the ‘Red Volunteers March’, flagged off by Mr Yechury here on Tuesday. The volunteers who began their march at the public meeting venue on the outskirts of Thoothukudi, however, found themselves at loggerheads with the police when they sought to make way for public vehicles in the area.

This angered a section of the comrades taking part in the march and they picked up a quarrel with the police and staged a road-roko on the busy Annanagar main road here. As the volunteers refused to leave the spot, police resorted to a mild lathi-charge to move them away from the place. In the melee, four persons including five-year-old Akilesh, son of a state SFI functionary from Tirupur, and three other party cadres were injured. Angered at the police action, some red shirt volunteers in turn pelted stones at the police in which two policemen, Sekar (45) and Ramsundar (27) were injured.

Even as political observers wondered about the correctness in some of the CPM cadres bringing their minor children to the rally, the clash was quickly brought to an end due to the intervention of the Thoothukudi district SP Mahendran and senior CPM leaders who pacified the agitated party volunteers and made them give up their road blockade.