Prakash Karat re-elected as CPI-M general secretary

Communist Party of India [ Images ] - Marxist veteran Prakash Karat [ Images ] was on Monday re-elected general secretary for the third consecutive term at the party's 20th Congress, which concluded in Kozhikode, Kerala [ Images ].

Karat, 64, was elected as general secretary in 2005 at the New Delhi [ Images ] Congress and reelected at Coimbatore for the second term.

Attended by over 700 delegates from all states, the meet, which had deliberated on the poll debacle the CPI-M [ Images ] suffered in West Bengal [ Images ] and Kerala, also elected a 15-member politburo.

While Kerala veteran and former chief minister V S Achuthanandan failed to get reinstated in the politburo, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee [ Images ] has been retained.

The new Politburo was announced by Karat at a press meet on the conclusion of the six-day meet.

New faces in the Politburo include CITU national president A K Padmanabhan, West Bengal opposition leader Suryakanta Mishra and former Kerala education minister M A Baby.

The 20th party Congress also adopted the organisational and ideological resolutions, besides extensively deliberating on the national and international political situation.