Kolkata, July 15 (IANS): With its constantly eroding political significance and vote bank, the CPI(M) in West Bengal is considering organisational restructuring, focusing on grassroot-level outreach.

Party insiders said on Monday that discussions have already started on a proposal to end the existing system of area committee and go back to the old system of local and zonal committees.

A state committee member of CPI(M) said that currently branch committee is the lowest tier in the party’s organisational chain, and the area committees act as the intermediate tier between a branch committee and a district committee.

“The current system of area committees was introduced in 2017 by merging the local and zonal committees. The logic then was that the existence of too many tiers was creating a sense of red tapism among the party functionaries and acting as a hurdle in smooth functioning.

“However, now it is being felt that the new system is not effective in ensuring in-depth mass outreach programmes, where the party functionaries get involved in the day-to-day and grassroots-level problems of the people at local levels. So discussions have started on going back to the old system,” the state committee member said.

It is learnt that a final decision on this organisational restructuring might be taken at the extended state committee meeting of the party at Kalyani in Nadia District in the third week of August after taking the opinion of district committees and on the basis of majority voice.

“Since 2011 we had been continuously evaluating the organisational weaknesses and after introspection it was felt that the problem was in the grassroots level mass interactions, which were once the base of our party in the state. So what is necessary is to reorganise that base,” the state committee member said.