The latest issue of People’s Democracy has an editorial by Sitaram Yechury on the police firing in Andhra Pradesh titled ‘Unparalleled Brutality Of The AP Government’. A considerable part of the editorial is devoted towards arguing that there is nothing common between the Andhra incident and Nandigram.

“In the first instance, the entire land struggle in Andhra Pradesh was a struggle to force the state government to implement its own election promises. In West Bengal, the effort of the anti-Left forces is to prevent the Left Front from implementing its election promises of rapid industrialisation. Secondly, the forcible takeover of Nandigram and adjoining areas under the pretext of protecting the agricultural lands from being taken over for industrial projects began on January 3, 2007. Given the misapprehensions amongst the people on land acquisition, the state government and the Left Front declared that no land will be acquired in this area. Despite this, the siege of the area continued...”

Srikrishna report

People’s Democracy gives the full text of a letter written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by Hannan Mollah, chairman, committee on Papers Laid on the Table (Lok Sabha) and Central Committee member of CPM, urging for the implementation of the Srikrishna report. “The cause and effect relationship between Mumbai riots following the demolition of Babri Masjid in December, 1992 and the blasts that took place in March 1993 was established more than adequately by Srikrishna commission report. The commission eloquently and unambiguously opined... there is no doubt that Shiv Sena took the lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders from the Sakha Pramukh to Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray who like a veteran general commanded the loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organising attacks against Muslims... The Congress-NCP government’s chief minister Shri Vilasrao Desmukh said that no culprit would be spared. But did his act commensurate with his words when he rushed to Shiv Sena patriarch to profusely express gratitude after presidential elections or prove his honesty in taking action against the perpetrators of Mumbai riots?”

Reckless UPA

The party says that the recent decision by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs to permit Navaratna and Miniratna PSEs to park 30 per cent of their surplus funds in equity based mutual funds is a retrograde step. “Channelising public sector funds into the secondary market in order to make speculative capital gains amounts to wasting public resources on socially unproductive investments. The CPI(M) and the Left parties had earlier suggested that the reserves of over Rs 2,39,000 crore currently being held by the CPSEs should be utilised by massively increasing capital investments by the CPSEs in expanding their scale of operations and creating fresh capacity, diversifying their activities if necessary.” The experience of the UTI scam should have precluded such a reckless decision, it says.

Compiled by Jayanth Jacob

editor@expressindia.com