People's Democracy

THE Central Committee had decided the number of delegates to attend the 17th congress at a total of 742, to be divided into 679 delegates and 63 observers.

One member of the Central Committee, Ahilya Rangnekar, could not attend the congress due to illness. One delegate from Canada as well as one observer each from Gujarat, Sikkim and CC Units were also absent. Thus a total of 677 delegates and 60 observers attended the congress.

Some relevant pieces of information about the delegates and observers attending the congress are like this:

C Kannan from Kerala was the oldest delegate. He is 90 years old. The youngest delegate was B Sethuraj, again from Kerala. He is 25 years old.

Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who joined the party in 1934, was the oldest party member in the congress.

Tejeswar Rao, a delegate from Andhra Pradesh, underwent the longest jail life of 13 years, 9 months and 26 days.

P K Chandranandan, a delegate from Kerala, had the longest underground life of 12 years 6 months.

The average age of delegates and observers was 55 years.

The credentials committee for the 17th CPI(M) congress, which had Chittabrata Majumdar as its convenor and M Vijaya Kumar, Jiten Choudhury, Charan SinghVirdi and R Govindarajan as members, presented the other relevant information about the delegates and observers, as revealed by the credential forms received from them, in the form of tables. These are being given below.

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