Opposition unity ongoing process, BJP's graph coming down: Yechury

CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said on Friday that while the formation of an opposition alliance was an "ongoing process", the significant development was that the ruling BJP's popularity graph was coming down drastically.

"The significant thing is not that whether an opposition alliance at the national level will be formed or what would be the contours of such an alliance -- because that is an ongoing process -- the significant thing is that the BJP's popularity and its vote share has come down drastically as is evident from the results of the recently concluded by-elections," Yechury said in response to a query at a press conference here.

In the by-elections to four Lok Sabha seats and 11 Assembly seats, whose results were declared on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could win only Palghar Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra and the Tharali Assembly seat in Uttarakhand.

It lost the crucial Kairana Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh to a combined opposition candidate as also the Noorpur Assembly seat in the state.

Yechury said public anger against the ruling party was palpable and this fact was more significant than the speculation of opposition unity.

He said that the projection of economic growth being presented by the BJP was "misleading" as the growth rate was being shown "through the new series" and that if one goes by the old series it was actually much lower.

Commenting on the four years of the Narendra Modi government's performance, Yechury said that it has been a "government of loot and jhoot (lies)".

Yechury said while there is no sign of promised jobs, the rural employment scheme has been paralysed, farmers are committing suicide, petroleum prices are at an all-time high and the communal polarisation is at its peak weakening the social fabric of the country.

"At the same time, the bad debt or non-performing assets have touched, as per cautious estimates, Rs 11.5 lakh crore. And people who looted this money are comfortably living in foreign countries. Nobody has been brought to the book," the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader said.

The CPI-M also released four booklets detailing the performance of the government on various fronts such as economy, jobs, health, agriculture, food security, alleged attacks on Constitution, Kashmir, the promises made by Modi in 2014 and promotion of "pseudo science", among others.

--IANS

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