DYFI state secretary Minakshi Mukherjee was included in the CPM central committee, elected on the last day of the party congress in Madurai on Sunday, signalling the party’s conscious call to make the young leader the face of the Bengal CPM.

Along with Mukherjee, four other CPM leaders — Kaninika Ghosh, Debabrata Ghosh, Syed Hussain and Saman Pathak, respectively — from Bengal made it to the party’s highest decision-making body for the first time.

The inclusion of five new faces from the state has raised the representation from Bengal at the central committee to 15 from the earlier 13.

“The four new faces were recruited to fill up the vacancies created by veterans Surjya Kanta Mishra, Rekha Goswami and Rabin Deb, dropped from the central committee because of the age bar,” said a CPM leader over the phone from Madurai.

Deb has been elected as the member of the party’s control commission that acts as the disciplinary watchdog of the CPM. Mishra’s vacancy in the politburo has been filled up by Sridip Bhattacharya, who was earlier the secretary of the party’s Howrah district unit.

To make room for young leaders, the CPM in 2021 decided to set a retirement age of 75 years for its central committee and politburo members. However, there are exceptions like Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, 79, continuing to hold onto his politburo membership.

A source in the CPM said during the election of M.A. Baby as the party’s general secretary, politburo member Ashok Dhawale had proposed Bengal state secretary Md Salim’s name for the top post that was shot down.

A leader considered close to Salim said the Bengal secretary had no intention to take up the top post as he was “working on his plan for Bengal”.

“He has put in place several plans for the party organisation in Bengal and repeatedly made it clear that he did not want to give up his role in the state. Dhawale, whose name was also doing the rounds for the top post, might have proposed Salim-da’s name as he is fluent in Hindi and English. Baby is not fluent in Hindi and speaks largely in English and Malayali,” the leader said.

As the party tries to regain its foothold in the state since it lost power in 2011, under Salim’s leadership in Bengal, the CPM has been putting at the frontlines of the struggle leaders from the party’s student and youth wings.

Among the young leaders that the party has been promoting, Mukherjee has been the most significant. The DYFI state secretary was not only pitted against chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the Nandigram constituency in the 2021 Assembly polls, but was also the star campaigner of the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

“She had successfully helmed the DYFI’s 50-day-long Insaaf Yatra that culminated with a massive rally at Brigade Parade Grounds on January 7 last year. Then came her leading role during the RG Kar protests. Minakshi is a key figure in Salim da’s plan to achieve a turnaround in Bengal. Her elevation to the central committee is a reflection of how the CPM is banking on her to come out of the stalemate that the party in Bengal remains stuck in,” a CPM insider said.

In Mukkherjee’s new role, she will need to live up to her words: “We will remain vigilant on the streets.”