By Nitya Chakraborty
The Communist Party of India (CPI) at its National Executive Committee meeting held on October 27 and 28 decided to intensify its agitation to expose the Rafale scam and the desperate attempts made by the BJP government led by the Prime Minister Narendra Mod in to use official machinery to cover up the sordid operations. The Party would be holding talks with the other opposition parties for a joint agitation throughout the country so that the misdeeds of this regime got exposed before the crucial Lok Sabha elections.
The meeting pointed out that as Rafale scam is getting murkier and murkier sounding death knell for the ruling party, the Modi government is using state machinery against political opponents to harass and terrorise them. I-T raids, ED raids on selected opposition parties activists starting from AAP party in Delhi, Congress, Samajwadi Party in some places, and now against Telugu Desam leaders, TDP supporting businessmen and supporters in Andhra Pradesh. The CBI has been reduced to ‘a parrot in the case’, as commented by the Supreme Court.
The meeting felt that the Modi government which has been posing a serious threat to our social and secular fabric all these years has in the fifth and final year of its term thrown open a severe challenge to our economic independence, financial and banking system and to developmental growth itself.
The ruling party BJP and its mentor RSS are working overtime for a makeover of its fallen image, counting on money power and polarization and communal-castesist lines to win over the voters. This has resulted in the mismanagement of the economy, surrender to domestic and foreign businesses, writing offs of huge bank loans, pampering of a few selected business houses close to the ruling party, bailing out of sick private companies at the cost Of PSBs and PSUs.
Even as the Rafale deal scam details are coming out shaking the tall claims of Modi government on transparency and ‘Na Khaunga, na Khane dunga’ (would not take bribes nor let anyone do so) another scam involving around thousands of crores of rupees has come out. The Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) scam which started with a default in August on a Rs 1,000 crore short-term loan extended by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) soon within weeks led to a trail of several defaults, resulting in a severe cash crunch for the private financial conglomerate.
The Modi government failed to act and proceed against the firm in 2016, when banks went slow on lending and IL&FS had to rely on short-term loans to service its debt even as it built long-term assets. This gave rise to a huge asset-liability mismatch. The IL&FS group has a total debt of Rs 91,000 crore. All those deals explain the dubious pro-corporate and anti-publc sector role Modi government which needs to be thoroughly expose and fought back along with AITUC and other central trade unions that have decided to extend full support to the CTUs’ all India strike.
As the economy is sinking due to failures of neo-liberal economic policies that integrated national economies more and more towards faltering US economy, the unprecedented fall of the value of Indian currency against the US dollar touching almost Rs 74 against a dollar leaves no immediate breather for our economy which has already been pushed on to a ventilator by Modi regime.
On the ensuing elections, the National Executive decided to make all efforts to ensure the defeat of BJP and its allies. The meeting noted that the people are determined to throw out the anti-people, anti-national, divisive and communal BJP governments in all the three states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Had the opposition been united, the defeat would have been much easier.
The situation in Telangana is different where the main rival is TRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao. Here the CPI, TDP, TJS and Congress are planning to fight together, though seat-sharing is yet to be finalised.
The desperate Modi government at the Centre is putting all kinds of pressure to scuttle unity of opposition parties, using official machinery to stall opposition candidates from contesting polls through all dubious means like charging them with false cases, etc.
CPI appealed to the people to vote for the Party and the Left candidates to ensure representation in state legislative assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana and defeat BJP by electing secular party candidates. The Party also appealed to the people to donate liberally to CPI Election Fund. (IPA Service)
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