The 7 th State Conference of West Bengal unit of CPI(ML) was held on 10-12 December 2004 at Arijit Mitra Nagar (Salt Lake Stadium) Kolkata. The hall and the dais of conference were named after the two departed leaders, Comrades Shankar Das and Tapan Chakraborty respectively. The open session was held on 10 December 2004 at Dharamtala, which was addressed by Party General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, Dipankar Chakraborty, editor of ‘Aneek’, writer Pachu Roy and veteran communist leader and human rights campaigner Sanat Roy Chowdhury, among others. Noted writer Mahashweta Devi sent a message which was read out to a gathering of 3000 people. The unique feature of the session was that the deprived people of Bengal representing workers of the closed mills, tea gardens and persons evicted from cities narrated their deprivations to the gathering. Raju Sabar of Amlasol, whose father had died of starvation, was also present.
The delegate session of the conference was attended by 260 delegates and 26 observes. Comrades Swadesh Bhattacharya, DP Buxi, Arindam Sen and Mrinmoy Chakraborty were also present in the conference. Delegates shared their living experiences, how they are confronting the CPM’s political terror and the government machinery’s highhandedness in the course of organizing the struggle on various fronts, especially in the rural areas and in the factories. The Rajbangshi delegates of North Bengal narrated their experience of state terror. The delegates from tea gardens, coalmines and jute mills described their experiences of organizing the workers against capital’s heightened offensive and the anti-labour policies of central and state governments. Delegates working on various other fronts discussed plans to take up important issues of the State, and launch vigorous mass movements against the State and Central Government’s anti-people polices. The delegates also discussed strategies of confronting unjust intervention by Courts against mass movements.
The conference elected a 27-member State Committee and re-elected Comrade Kartik Pal as its secretary. The conference adopted a 12-point resolution and chalked an agenda of expanding the Party’s mass base, strengthening the party structures at various levels and initiating militant mass movements in the State with renewed vigour.