Having won the first round in the battle for supremacy in the Communist Party of India(Marxist) (CPI(M)), Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is unlikely to let his advantage slip as he takes on party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury at the 22nd party Congress, which began in Hyderabad on Wednesday, 18 April.
The first round was won by Vijayan in January 2018 at a Central Committee meeting of the party in Delhi.
He had then led a group of 55 members who voted in favour of former General Secretary Prakash Karat's position that the CPI(M) should not have any electoral truck with the Congress party. Only 31 voted against the move, which incidentally was the line of Yechury, a strong votary of an alliance with the Congress.
And since then, the already-sour relationship between the two has taken a nosedive.
The battle between the two groups can be traced back to the 21st CPI(M) party Congress held at Visakhapatnam in 2015. While Vijayan and his faction wanted S Ramachandran Pillai, the veteran party leader from Kerala, to become the General Secretary, things did not quite go the way he wished, paving the way for Yechury's elevation as Karat's successor.