Five lakh CPI men to court arrest

CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan today said that the BJP Government at the Centre had proved to be national disaster during its nine-month rule, by dismantling and devaluing a number of democratic institutions, encouraging and conniving communal attacks by the Front organisations of the Sangh Parivar and messing up the foreign policies, which had resulted in more enemies than friends. The claimof `stable Government-able leader’ had turned out to be a hoax, as the Government was not even capable of Cabinet expansion.

Bardhan alleged that the economic policies of the Vajpayee Government had heaped more and more miseries on the common people. He lambasted pushing through the decisions on Public Sector Undertakings, which amounted to surrender before the international financial institutions and transnational corporations of the United States. He said the effort was on in order to register people’s protest.

On the farm front also, he blamed the BJP Government for having failed to come into action by way of compensating the farmers for the crop loss.

He did not spare even the Congress which, he said, was acting in collusion with the BJP on certain issues, especially with reference to Insurance Regulatory Authority and the patent legislation.

On evolving Third Front under the situation, he made it clear that it had to be based on common issues and against communalism, but the CPI would not be inhaste, as the country was witnessing alignment and realignment of political forces. The forces which were opposed to the communalism of the BJP and anti-people policies of the Congress, could provide the third alternative. There was no decision so far, as to which was to be included or excluded, he said with reference to the RLM. There would have to be a broad agreement on policies.

He said the BJP and the Congress were also colluding on another issue and it was evolving a two-party system in which the third alternative would not matter. “We are opposed to it,” he said. The two-party system would have BJP and its allies on one side, with the Congress and its allies on the other.