Naming a Prime Ministerial candidate even before the people have decided who they will bring to power is tantamount to insulting the electorate, according to CPI (M) MP Sitaram Yechury. That is the reason the Third Front has refrained from naming its PM.

The CPI (M) is of the opinion that naming a Prime Ministerial candidate by a political party or a bloc before the Lok Sabha elections are over is tantamount to insulting the electorate at large. This is the reason why the Left led Third Front has refrained from naming a Prime Minister. This was what CPI (M) politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury has to say.

The MP, who was addressing a gathering in Kolkata at a seminar, the ‘Present Political and Economic Scenario and the Role of Citizens’, on Sunday organized by the Rajasthan Bengal Maitri Parishad, said that it was up to the electorate to effect a change. It is the voter who will elect or reject candidates. With nobody sure who will form the government how could a Prime Minister be named. The CPI (M) leader’s take on a Prime Ministerial candidate comes in the wake of the Congress ridiculing the Front for not being able to name a PM. Yechury said they were looking at forming non-Congress, non-BJP secular government where the Left will play a role and it was for the people to decide who they wanted in at the Centre and then a PM can be chosen where there were many to chose from. The government at the Centre has to deal with the global financial crisis and infuse economic stimulus to the country, he added.

Training his guns on the Congress’s central leadership for the caustic comments made by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their poll campaign in Bengal, Yechury said a quarter century ago Rajiv Gandhi had called Calcutta “a dying city” and paid a heavy price where the Congress failed at the hustings in the red bastion. This time around the party is making the same mistake saying that Bengal had witnessed no development despite the Left being in power for 32 years. He said the Congress was insulting the people of Bengal.

The Marxist MP wondered why the people of the state were voting the Leftists to power time and again if there had been no development of the state in over three decades. “Are people in Bengal not intelligent enough?” he asked and added that it was tantamount to insulting the people of Bengal.

The Congress, he felt should come up with an alterative development plan for Bengal instead of just being critical of the Left. He said Bengal having made rapid strides in land reforms is now moving towards rapid industrialisation.

Unlike CPI (M) general secretary, Prakash Karat but in resonance with other leaders like Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Left Front chairman Biman Bose, Yechury too kept the door ajar for a post-poll alliance with the Congress. He said he has been asked whether his party would support the Congress again to which he has said there is a political battle on where the Leftists are fighting the BJP and the Congress. “If I am asked what will you do if you lose, then what is the point in fighting this battle?” was his rather amorphous statement.

Later speaking at an election rally in Arrambagh in Hooghly, Yechury said the Congress’s anti-people policies were helping the BJP. He added that the saffron brigade was heading towards getting a Lok Sabha seat in Darjeeling in Bengal thanks to the Congress.

Yechury Addresses Rally In Darjeeling

FAR-FLUNG IMPLICATIONS OF CPI(M) RALLY

CPI (M) today literally unleased plans to divide India again on communal lines for vote bank politics. The language and rhetoric is enough to tear the framework of Indian society:

Highlights of Folders on (1) Dalits & Tribals, (2) Women (3) Differently Abled

A. Dalits and Tribals
1.Dalits and Adivasis together constitute 25% of the population. Yet governments headed by the BJP and the Congress have pursued neo-liberal policies that intensified their problems.

Employment:
2.In its CMP, the Congress-led Government promised time-bound filling up of all reservation quotas, through a new Reservation Act and reservation in the private sector. Instead, of the 1,70,000 posts lying vacant in the Railways alone, 32,600 SCs and STs posts are not yet filled up. Over 13,000 vacancies in the promotional quota were denied on grounds of ‘merit’ and thousands of jobs denied in direct recruitment.

3.They buckled under corporate pressure and did not take forward the assurance for reservations in the private sector.

4.The Government brought a Bill to to dereserve jobs in higher educational institutions, and exempt 47 institutions from providing reservation in scientific and technical posts. This was stalled by the Left and other secular parties.

Land
5.Despite the CMP promise no initiative was taken for land redistribution, and Congress state governments raised land ceilings to benefit private business and encouraged take over of land in Vth Schedule areas by corporates.

Allocation
6.Despite a clear policy mandate, 16% of the expenditures was not allocated for SCs, restricted to less than half of this in the Sub Plan. In the Tribal Sub Plan, the policy level of 6% was not allocated, remaining at just about 4% of the total plan allocation.

Forest Rights
7.The Congress-led Government initially tabled a highly diluted Bill to guarantee the forest rights. The CPI(M) played a central role in strengthening and enacting the Schedule Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2007. These include the inclusion of non-tribal traditional forest dwellers; change in cut off year from 1980 to 2005; increase in ceiling on individual land rights from 2.5 ha to 4 ha; no relocation without recognition of rights in protected areas; ensuring rights over to MFP and women’s rights.
8.Even though the Act has been passed the Environment Ministry in the Congress-led government continues to hand over forest land to corporates for mining and other projects without consulting tribals. In just five years 5.73 lakh hectares of such land was diverted.

Atrocities
9.Atrocities against adivasis and dalits went unchecked by the government. It was during the tenure of the UPA that the worst atrocities were committed against Dalits, like that of Khairlanji when a dalit woman and her three children were brutally killed.

B. Women: Litany of Broken Promises
Legislation
1.The Common Minimum Programme of the Congress led UPA Government proclaimed “to fully empower women politically, educationally, economically and legally”

2.Shamefully, the Women’s Reservation Bill, pending for 12 years, introduced after four years in the Rajya Sabha, has not been passed.

3.The government refused to enact comprehensive legislation on sexual assault covering minors as well in spite of the recommendations of the Law Commission and the National Commission of Women. Despite a 12-year old Supreme Court order, the Government did not enact a comprehensive Act to deal with sexual harassment at the workplace. Another long-pending legislation that was not enacted covers trafficking in women and minors.


Recession
4.Neo-liberal policies have hit women hard. The impact of the current global crisis will make thousands of women jobless. Already in some export-oriented industries like garments, thousands of women have been retrenched. However, the current stimulus and bailout packages completely by pass women workers.
SHGs

5.Despite more than 3 crore Self Help Groups in the country, the government refused to treat the credit needs of the SHGs as a priority sector and did not even lower interest rates to 4%.

C. Differently Abled: Right to Live with Dignity
1.The Congress-led government’s slogan of “inclusive growth” rings hollow when seen in relation to the rights, needs and requirements of the disabled or differently abled population in India, even though constitute at least 6% of the population.

2.The PWD Act provisions 3% reservation in jobs in all government and public sector units for the disabled. The share of the disabled against the total strength in actual terms is barely 0.44% as against their estimated population of 5-6%.

3.With much fanfare, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, announced a scheme of providing one lakh jobs per annum to persons with disabilities, with a proposed outlay of Rs. 1800 crore, during the Eleventh Plan, in the Union Budget 2006-07. However, Chidambaram himself admitted some time later that “not a single recruitment has been made six months after the Scheme was announced”.

The election line of the party does not depend on who the General Secretary is

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PRAKASH KARAT In 2004, the CPI (M) fought the elections with twin goals: defeat the BJP and maximise Left presence in Parliament. The party was spectacularly successful in this. This time, the CPI (M) aims to strengthen the Left and democratic forces and form an alternative secular government.
The CPI (M)’s general secretary Prakash Karat has played a pivotal role in the formation of a Third Front. In an interaction with K.V. Prasad, he talks about the emerging political scenario.

This is the first time the CPI (M) is contesting a general election after you became the General Secretary. What is the new strategy to increase the CPI (M)’s presence in the Lok Sabha? The election line of the party does not depend on who the General Secretary is. The Central Committee decides the party’s political approach and tactics for elections. As for strategy, the role the CPI (M) played in national politics in the last five years is going to be basis on which we will go to the people. We expect that people will recognise that we played an important role in defending national sovereignty and ensuring that certain pro-people commitments made in the Common Minimum Programme were implemented. We strived hard to see that polices that were harmful to people were not adopted.

Your overall political assessment in the country and that of the Left parties’ performance in particular. The overall political situation in the country has been marked by the failure of the two major parties, with the Congress and the BJP unable to win increased support. The other factor is that both the alliances, the UPA and the NDA, are in the doldrums. The country is experiencing the adverse impact of global economic crisis, [with] growing economic difficulties of the people, whether it is loss of lakhs of jobs, rise in the prices of essential commodities or agrarian crisis. None of these are being effectively tackled by the Congress-led Government. At the same time, the BJP has proved incapable of rising above its sectarian and communal agenda. This has created a situation where the emergence of a Third Force has become credible and gathered momentum. The CPI (M) and the Left parties are working to build an effective non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.

The CPI (M) leadership was mandated to strive for a third alternative. How much of this task has been accomplished? We had envisaged a third alternative based on policies opposed to that of the Congress and the BJP. Such an alternative needs to be built over a period but for this Lok Sabha election, we are striving for an electoral alternative. This platform will broadly cover four major areas: initiate pro-people economic policies as against neo-liberal policies; firm defence of secularism; strong federalism; and independent foreign policy. It is around such a platform that an alternative can be set up.

Has the CPI (M) given the Bahujan Samaj Party a greater l profile than the party had achieved so far? The BSP had acquired a national profile after its victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly in 2007 and it is not the CPI (M), which has contributed. What we have done is to identify areas of cooperation between the Left and BSP during the trust vote in July 2008.
You had mentioned that the effort this time would be to ensure that a non-Congress and non-BJP Government is not rocked by either party from the outside. How do you plan to do this? We have the experience of having non-Congress secular governments in the country. In 1989-90, it was the National Front Government of V.P. Singh in 1996-98, it was the United Front Government. They were destabilised by the Congress or the BJP or together. Our effort in these elections is to muster enough strength for a non-Congress secular government to be able to run on its own. It is a difficult task but given the churning that is going on in Indian politics, it is not impossible.

Is the issue of whether the new national alternative should seek the support of the Congress settled? Or has it been left for the future? As I said, we would like to see an alternative secular government, which will have the strength to run on its own steam. What will happen after the elections cannot be speculated now. It will have to take into account post-election situation. Realignment [of political forces] is bound to happen. We do not expect the UPA and the NDA to remain in the present form.

NEW DELHI - The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Friday opposed the Congress party’s demand for president’s rule in Orissa after allegations of foul play in the trust vote.

‘The politburo of the CPI-M strongly opposes the demand to impose president’s rule in Orissa,’ it said and warned the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre that ‘it should not resort to any such blatant partisan measure.’

Leaders of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday met Orissa Governor
M.C. Bhandare to discuss their complaint that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) won the trust vote in the assembly Wednesday through manipulation and foul play.

Accusing the Congress of teaming up with the BJP to demand the Patnaik government’s dismissal, the CPI-M politburo said there was no basis for the governor to recommend president’s rule in the state.

‘With the withdrawal of support by the BJP to the Naveen Patnaik government, the governor had asked the chief minister to prove his majority on the floor of the house. In the assembly, the motion of confidence was passed by a voice vote. There is no basis, therefore, for the governor to recommend president’s rule,’ the CPI-M said.

CEO interacts with political leaders