Friday, July 16, 2010

CPI(M) leaders console victims of the Andhra police firing

A team of leaders and activists of Communist Party of India(Marxist) visited Lakkavaram, Palasapuram, Isukalapalem, Golagondi and Ramayapatnam on Thursday and consoled the villagers who were victims of the police firing on agitators.

The team members asked the villagers not to be cowed down by the threats of the Government and the police but continue to fight for their rights. They promised to stand by the agitators in their fight for justice. The team members said that thousands of villagers and fishermen were dependent on the fertile and marshy lands in the affected villages for their livelihood. They alleged that the Government had forcibly acquired 1,600 acres of land from the villagers.

The CPI(M) leaders said that the victims were not willing to part with their lands even after losing their kith and kin. They demanded stoppage of all the activities of NCC on the disputed land and a probe by a judge of the High Court into the firing.

(Courtesy : The Hindu)

Trinamool Congress - Maoist Nexus Exposed













































TRINAMOOL MP SUPPLIED
AMMO TO NAXALITES
By Anirban Roy in Kolkata


THE PRIVATE alliance between the Trinamool Congress and the CPI ( Maoist) has been exposed. Subhendu Adhikari, the Trinamool Congress MP from Tamluk, close to Nandigram, had supplied over 1,000 rounds of ammunition to the Maoist party cadre in Nandigram, claims the Criminal Investigation Department ( CID) of West Bengal police.

Adhikari, the son of union minister of state in the ministry of rural development Sisir Kumar Adhikari, was active during the Trinamool Congress led fight against the Left Front government’s plans to acquire land in Nandigram. This had first led to police firing in March 2007 and later to a pitched battle between Maoist cadres and the police in August 2008.
According to the CID’s interrogation of Madhusudan Mondal, the Maoist zonal committee secretary for Nandigram, the Maoists set up a base in Nandigram only after March 2007 and began arming the local cadres with the help of Trinamool Congress.

The CID had arrested Mondal on June 29 from Amtala in South 24- Parganas district. A copy of the interrogation report of the Maoist leader is available with M AIL T ODAY . Mondal told the police that Adhikari supplied ammunition for the CPI ( Maoist) members to fight the CPI ( M) and the police in Nandigram. Meanwhile, the over ground activists of the Maoist party along with the Trinamool and others had set up the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee ( BUPC) to mobilise people against land acquisition.

Adhikari termed the report as totally false, and said it was being circulated with the intention to malign him. “ Our movement was a non- violent movement,” he claimed, adding that Trinamool members were rather victims of the CPI( M)’ s armed attacks in Nandigram.
“ If we used arms, why was no one from the other side injured or killed?” Adhikari questioned. He said it was an attempt by West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to target the Trinamool Congress. About 35 Marxist cadres, including two local committee secretaries — from the Kendamari local committee and Sonachura local committee — were killed over one and half years of the Maoist- led fight against the CPI( M).

Adhikari is a commerce graduate. He was a member of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and later president of the Trinamool youth wing in Midnapore. He has declared assets worth Rs 5 crore, including buildings, apartments and non- agricultural land.
Mondal’s confession has confirmed that the anti- land acquisition movement was far from being non- violent. During the interrogation, he said the Maoists wanted to kill Laxman Seth, the then CPI ( M) MP from Haldia.

Mondal claimed that the Maoists, BUPC cadres and the Trinamool worked in tandem to thwart the government’s attempt to acquire land in Nandigram. Mondal has been charged with offences under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967. Interestingly, a member of Mondal’s Maoist committee is a Trinamool activist, Chandan Pramanik.

The members of the zonal committee are Siddhartha Mondal, Pramanik and Radheshyam Giri. Pramanik is also the anchal ( area) secretary of the Trinamool at Khejuri and is underground. All the other members of the Nandigram unit have been arrested. The first Maoist zonal committee of Nandigram was formed in September 2007 in the presence of Maoist leaders Telegu Deepak and Sudip Congder in the house of Khokon Sheet. Madhusudan Mondal was made secretary. Local Trinamool leaders began aiding the Maoist operations as soon as the committee was formed.

According to the police interrogation report, armed Maoist cadres — Bantul, Kartik, Badal, Mukti, Jhantu and Juna — were sent to Trinamool’s local Nandigram leader Nishikanta Mondal to counter the CPI( M) and the police, Mondal said. Deepak and Congder liaised with Nishikanta and other Trinamool and BUPC leaders for the armed operations.
Two training camps were organised at the Sonachura Primary School and Sonachura Shitala Mandir. More than 50 BUPC and Trinamool members undertook training. Maoist commanders Ranjit Pal, Congder and Deepak had imparted the training. Mondal told his interrogators that as the movement in Nandigram was gaining momentum, Congder had brought four .303 rifles and one 9 mm carbine from the Jangalmahal area. He handed the weapons over to Sheet. Subsequently, Congder brought 18 rifles of .315 caliber.

One make- shift arms- manufacturing unit had been set up in an abandoned house in Goalpara village near Sonachura, the interrogation report revealed. A man identified as Barun was in charge of the gun factory, and had manufactured 50 firearms of .315 caliber to fight the CPI(M) cadres and the police. Mondal told the police that the Maoist Nandigram zonal unit was in possession of 20 claymore mines, of which, only three were used. The other mines were deactivated as per the advice of the Trinamool members.

After the state committee of the CPI( Maoists) decided to withdraw cadres from Nandigram, some of the arms and ammunition were deposited with four Trinamool leaders, the report said.

Five .315 rifles and one .303 rifles were kept with Sheikh Sahabuddin of Hossainpur, four .315 rifles, two .303 rifles and one 9 mm carbine were kept with Nishikanta. Three .315 rifles and one .303 rifle were kept with Indra Karan and Panchanan Das in Khejuri village.

Later, the BUPC and Trinamool leaders refused to return the weapons and ammunition to the Maoists. However, Mondal claimed that the Maoists were not responsible for Nishikanta Mondal’s killing in September last year. Mondal is from Durgachowk village in East Midnapore district. His parental landed property near Haldia Port was acquired by the Kolkata Port Trust ( KoPT), with promises of a permanent job and monetary compensation. But, the family did not get anything.

Soon he joined the Sangrami Shramik Mancha, an organisation fighting for the families that lost their land to the KoPT. He was arrested in 2004 for clashing with a CPI( M) member. In 2006, he returned to his village, and was arrested again in connection with the old case. In jail, he met many people from Nandigram, and became close to them. On January 2, 2007, he went to Nandigram, and started taking part in the movement against land acquisition spearheaded by the BUPC. During his stay in Nandigram, he was motivated and indoctrinated in Maoist ideologies by Ajit Das alias Nirmal Das, a state committee member of the CPI (Maoist). On April 27, 2007, he met Maoist leaders Deepak, Congder and few others, and decided to join the organisation.

Agitation for Dalits cannot be termed as disruption of peace : CPIM

Agitation to secure the rights of Dalits can not be construed as disruption of peace, said G. Ramakrishnan, Secretary, Tamil Nadu State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxists).

Talking to newspersons here on Thursday, Mr. Ramakrishnan faulted the statement of Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi that the people of Uthapuram in Madurai district were living peacefully and that the CPI (M) leaders were instigating the people of Uthapuram. The Dalits in Uthapuram had been demanding government approval for the construction of a bus shelter in the main bus stand with the funds of Rs.3.75 lakh sanctioned by T.K. Rangarajan, CPI (M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP under the MPs Local Area Development Scheme, and permission to worship in Muthalamman Temple. However, the district administration has not taken any action on the demands. It was for this reason that Mr. Rangarajan and others staged an agitation in front of the Madurai Collectorate on Tuesday.“The government should not term such an agitation as disruption of peace”, he said.

The CPI (M) leader said that while only one portion of the wall that prevented the entry of Dalits into the area inhabited by caste Hindus in Uthapuram was destroyed in 2008, some obstacles still remained on the pathway. The CPI (M) wanted these obstacles to be removed.

Referring to the demand for government approval for the construction of the bus shelter in Uthapuram, he said the Madurai District Collector was saying that the caste Hindus in Uthapuram were objecting to the construction of the bus shelter. The Collector ought to hold talks with both parties and solve the issue, he said.

Mr. Ramakrishnan condemned the “police harassment” on Mr. Rangarajan and CPI (M) workers and Dalits who agitated in front of the Madurai Collectorate on Tuesday.

Referring to the expulsion of C. Govindasamy, CPI (M) MLA of Tirupur from the primary membership of the party, the State Committee Secretary said that the action was taken because Mr. Govindasamy, on Saturday without consulting the party, announced his decision to hold a meeting in Tirupur on August 1 to felicitate the Tamil Nadu government for the schemes implemented in Tirupur.

. “Any party functionary, even if he is an MLA, has to act in political matters only on the advice of the State party leadership”, he said.

Mr. Ramakrishnan said that Mr. Govindasamy's announcement of a felicitation meeting for the DMK government was an attempt to join the DMK. The exit of Mr. Govindasamy and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leaders S. Muthusamy and Chinnasamy and their joining the DMK would neither weaken the Opposition parties, nor strengthen the DMK, he said.

Vellore District CPI (M) Committee secretary A. Narayanan said that the CPI (M) held a taluk conference in Ambur on Thursday protesting against the negligence of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board which allowed incidents such as the deaths of tannery workers while cleaning effluent tanks in Vaniyambadi and other places, and demanding house site pattas for the houseless poor.

(Courtesy : The Hindu)

TMC-Maoist Nexus: Brinda to PM

Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh ji,
A day after your initiative in calling a meeting of Chief Ministers of Maoist Affected States comes fresh evidence of the direct contacts and support to the Maoists by leaders of a party which is part of the ruling alliance and also represented in the Central Cabinet. I enclose a copy of the front page report published in Mail Today on July 16, which gives details of the links between an elected MP of the Trinamool Congress and the Maoists in the Nandigram area of West Bengal including the supply of arms and ammunition to the Maoists.
My Party has written to you with evidence of these links on an earlier occasion also. In view of the fresh disclosures, I hope the Central Government will show the political will to take appropriate action in the national interest.

Onto the Seventh All India Conference of AIAWU

Suneeth Chopra (Central Executive Member, CPIM)

THE seventh all India conference of the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union will be taking place in Tiruchirapalli (Trichy) in Tamilnadu on July 17-19 in a period when a serious crisis affects not only agricultural growth, but the lives and livelihood of the mass of landless agricultural workers, farmers, craftsmen and petty producers in our rural areas. It is evident that the 7 per cent – 9 per cent figures of growth have provided benefits only to the rich with the numbers of dollar billionaires going up, but neither employment nor the standard of living of the poor has increased. In fact, if we look at the figures of the share of agriculture in the GDP of the country, it has come down to a third of what it was while the number of people depending on agriculture has remained virtually the same. This means that every one working in agriculture is getting only a third of what he or she used to get for their labour some 20 years ago. More work and less pay is a general situation in a crisis whose burden the government is heaping on the people by conscious and fraudulent measures.

REDUCING WORK DAYS

In fact, employment in agriculture has come down. In the 1980s, work was available for 123 days a year. It had come down to 100 days in 1990. In 2001 it was 78 days. In 2003 it came down to 72 and in 2007 only 57 days. At the same time, the numbers of unemployed have increased. According to census figures, the number of rural landless increased from 7 crores 46 lakhs in 1991 to 10 crores 74 lakhs in 2001. The figures not only show how those working in agriculture are losing out to land being shifted from food crops to less labour intensive cash crops labour-eliminating machinery and pesticides, but also to farmers losing their lands and entering the labour market. This has had a devastating effect on the lives and livelihood of agricultural labour.

This is evident from the figures of various NSSO rounds. Between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 alone, the percentage of rural landless increased from 32.1 per cent to 36 per cent. Today, with evictions on account of SEZs, residential schemes, roads and industry reaching a new high the figure of the landless can be as high as 45 per cent. In these conditions, one would have expected the implementation of a two-pronged approach: provision of adequate employment under NREGA and the stress on self-employment by ensuring the implementation of radical land reforms and of the Tribal and Traditional Forest Dwellers Act. Even failing this, a committee appointed by P V Narasimha Rao had come to the conclusion that at a very low level of growth of the GDP, 3 per cent, one crore jobs could be created each year, removing joblessness in nine years. Taking the cue from this committee’s report, Atal Behari Vajpayi also promised one crore jobs a year. But the policies pursued by Dr Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram as finance ministers and the former as prime minister ensured that lakhs of government jobs including those in the army, railways, education and health services would be eliminated and the result was higher figures of growth but no jobs. This policy is only one of ensuring more profits from an increased workload and lower wages because of competition from the reserve army of the unemployed.

This policy, from the perspective of a country in which 84 crore people live on Rs 20 per day, can only be described as anti-national and in the interests of global bankers, multinationals and corporates who have given us so many examples of unforgivable greed, total lack of concern for the safety of their workers and the people where they operate, with complete disregard for both the people and the environment. Under these circumstances we have only our organisations and the political organisations of the Left and democratic forces that we can rely on. The All India Agricultural Workers Union is one of the largest of these in our country and serves the interests of the most exploited and oppressed in our society. We have a special responsibility to reach out to the most backward sections of this population and win over their confidence and support.

To an extent we have succeeded in doing so in states like Kerala and Tripura, where almost all agricultural workers are enrolled under our banner. In Andhra Pradesh too, we have succeeded in advancing our movement qualitatively among the rural workers. In states like Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka we can say that with proper effort and vision we can be poised on threshold of advance. In states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and Orissa, we have been running an organisation but it needs more support and attention from the democratic movement as a whole. But we have a membership in 12 states only. It is to be regretted that in a major state like Madhya Pradesh our union has ceased to exist and it is the same in Gujarat, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. The immediate task before the central leadership of the union and the democratic movement is to ensure that this lacuna is removed as soon as possible after the conference. Otherwise the building up of an all India agricultural movement cannot be achieved. Today, while we are approaching the half million mark, the unevenness of growth prevents us intervening effectively in ensuring the conditions of work, lives and livelihood of agricultural labour. This cannot continue without damaging even those movements where we have succeeded in building regional strength.

GALVANISE MOVEMENT

Even on the basis of our regional movements, we have been able to carry forward the struggle for a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour, to ensure the passage of the MNREGA with most of our amendments to the Act being accepted by the first UPA regime. The same is the case with the Forest Rights Act. But now under the second UPA, every effort is there to scuttle these laws and get people to lose confidence in fighting to implement them. We as the most powerful organisation of agricultural labour in the country have a duty not only to ensure that people do not lose confidence in fighting for the implementation of legislation useful to them, but we are also bound to ensure that other legislations that should be passed also enter the arena of our future struggles.

One such legislation is the Food Security Act, which as usual is a fraud. The present Act will virtually do away with the APL category of the public distribution system, reduce the BPL category drastically, and cut down the Antodaya amount of grain from 35 kg per card to 25 kg. If this fraud is allowed to succeed, the public distribution system as we know it will be destroyed. The poorest people will be left to the mercy of the market. Here too, a government bent on exploiting and dispossessing our rural masses and handing over their assets and labour to brutal exploiters, has done nothing to stop the ongoing price-rise of nearly 20 per cent over the last year. Worse it has contributed considerably to this price-rise by raising the prices of fuels, kerosene, LPG and grain under PDS repeatedly. Given this, we have no alternative but to organise and throw ourselves into struggle immediately after the conference.

A number of issues are looming before us. There is the question of wages, of unemployment, of hunger and lack of availability of food, of land and house-sites, of the implementation of government schemes without corruption, of protection from a corrupt and predatory police force, of atrocities committed by the rural rich and criminal elements, and against the growing violence against dalits and women by the self appointed guardians of caste principles and caste oppression. These issues can and must be taken up vigorously. This can only be done if the time spent on discussion during the conference is used to address these issues on the basis of past and present experience, and analysed to provide a guideline for future action. The seventh conference of the AIAWU must address these issues and provide guidelines and solutions to the problems of agricultural labour and rural poor. This is the only way to win their confidence and face the future with hope. We are preparing to do this and we hope to succeed on the basis of what we had done in the field already. We intend to draw in larger sections of agricultural labour into our fold than ever before and launch struggles on an all India basis that is the need of the hour.

CPIM Kerala unit to Gheroe Central Government Offices on July 22


CPIM Kerala state unit has decided to gheroe all major central government offices the anti-people polices followed by the Congress led UPA Government. The latest in this series of anti-people measures being the hike in petroleum prices.

Unprecedented price rise especially for the essential commodities including food grains resulted in deep misery in the life and livelihood of the common people in the country. Unequivocally, such a miserable situation is the direct outcome of the Neo-liberal policies. The Central government implemented those policies in agricultural sector and consequently cut down the subsidies in a phased manner. In the last Central budget itself the government had slashed 3000 crores of rupees in the fertilizer subsidy compared to last year's expenditure. The government had withdrawn from its responsibility in procurement of food grains and allied assistance in the agriculture sector resulting in accurate miseries to the farmers. Agriculture has become unviable and thus farmers' suicides have grown to be very common and consequently the growth rate in agriculture has seen a steady fall, posing threat to the food security of our country. Since 1965 FCI had monopoly in food grain procurement and didn't allow the private sector to enter. But the neo-liberal policies authorized the corporate sector with a free hold in storing food grains. Corporate intrusion in food sector aggravated the price rise and again the futures trading and speculative trade deteriorated the situation further. Corporate houses used it as a golden opportunity to accumulate food grains extensively and a bogus food shortage was created to make super profits. Hence the Corporate sector gained, farmers remained in misery and common people had to tolerate the menace of severe hike in prices!

It is widely acknowledged that price rise in petroleum products will further intensify inflation and subsequently lead to worsening of the situation. Still the UPA II did not hesitate to increase the excise duty imposed on petroleum products that added to the price hike. Increased freight charges particularly for the consumer states like Kerala, again results in deep crisis so far as price rise is concerned.

As per the decision Every major central government office will be gheroed from 7 in the morning till 1 Pm. Proclamation jathas will be carried out in every Local committee. It has been decided to distribute pamphlets containing the misdeads of the UPA Government. Hectic campaign is being going on in the state for the success of the struggle.