Left parties to launch campaign against communalism, peoples' problems

Six Left parties Saturday decided to launch a nationwide joint campaign against communalism and other problems affecting people's lives.

After a meeting here, the parties decided to work together as a pressure block and launch a campaign against communalism.

Apart from the Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), the two-hour meeting was attended by Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist-Liberation, the Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Forward Bloc.

The parties decided to conduct a week-long protest campaign from Dec 8-14 in different parts of the country.

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat told the media that the parties have made a joint call against the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and aggressive Hinduvta.

"This government is backed by corporates and Hinduvta forces. For the first time the six left parties have come together."

"We have put out a nine-point charter of demand which includes the attack on MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) by the Modi government, its decision to increase FDI in the insurance sector, its failure despite election promises to take firm steps to unearth black money..," he said.

He alleged the Rashtriya Swasyamsewak Sangh was trying to "infiltrate" the education system, various social and cultural institutions. "There is this so called 'love jihad' campaign by the RSS and the Hindutva outfits."

On plans to join hands with other secular parties, Karat said: "First our effort is to strengthen the Left and unite the Left forces. After that we will see about other things.

"Its a process of widening and strengthening the Left. There are other forces also in the Left. We will try to bring them together," he said.

As part of the protest, the parties would focus on price rise, "exorbitant" price of medicines and drugs, against hike in FDI in insurance and unearthing black money.

Besides Karat, those who attended the meeting included Debabrata Biswas of the Forward Bloc, Kshiti Goswami and Manoj Bhattacharya of the RSP, Swapan Mukherjee and Kavita Krishnan of CPI-ML-Liberation, Manik Mukherjee and Ranjit Dhar of SUCI-C, A.B. Bardhan and D. Raja of CPI and S. Ramachandran Pillai of CPI-M.