The CPI-M Kollam district committee also asked N Padmalochanan to resign as the Kollam city mayor, which he duly obliged. He kicked up a row last week by inaugurating the organizing committee office for according a reception to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.
The CPI-M district committee also rejected the mayor's apology through the media for attending the function and praising the Hindu revivalist organization, which is considered the ideological patron of the principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A statement from the CPI-M said his action was an "unpardonable mistake" and hence he was removed from the primary membership of the party and he had been asked to resign as city mayor immediately.
"I realized that going for the RSS function was a mistake and I shouldn't have done that. I would not repeat the mistake," he was repeatedly shown as saying on the CPI-M's television channel People the other day. However, the committee rejected his apology and none came in his defense at the meeting.
The party rejected Padmalochanan's claim that he attended the function in his capacity as the mayor as the function attended by tens of thousands of uniformed volunteers were being held in Ashramam Maidan owned by the city corporation and the Sangh outfit had offered to clean up the ground spending a huge sum. The bonhomie was widely seen as a step to end the hostilities between the two that had claimed scores of lives.
Posters demanding the mayor's ouster soon appeared in the city demanding probe into the RSS links of the mayor's daughter living in Mumbai. The CPI-M-affiliated employees union in the corporation, which came out against him also alleged that he remained at home on during a shutdown called by the Sangh Pariwar outfit Bharatiya Masdoor Sangh (BMS) recently.
The mayor's picture lighting a traditional brasslamp lamp before the the portraits of Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalker, the ideologue of the organization and its supreme leader for long appeared in the media also irked the party cadres.
"We feel proud that the mahasanghik (great community meet) is going to be held here in Kollam. I wish all the best for the event and thankfully acknowledge the goodwill gesture of inviting me for the inaugural function," the mayor had said then.
The CPI-M will now find it difficult to identify a suitable replacement for Padmalochanan before the civic polls due in September. He had worked as the CPI-M state committee member and the state secretary of the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) before being demoted for factionalism.