Left parties to protest against UPA's economic policies

Parliamentary leaders of CPI-M, CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc met here today and decided that their MPs would concentrate on raising issues like price rise, unemployment, food security, agrarian crisis, FDI in retail and the general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR) on taxing foreign investments, they said.

The leaders also decided to hold a protest dharna at the main gate of the Parliament House on Tuesday, the sources said.

The meeting was attended among others by Sitaram Yechury, Basudeb Acharia (both CPI-M), D Raja and Gurudas Dasgupta (both CPI).

The four parties recently staged a five-day dharna here on the issue of food security, demanding amendments to the Food Security Bill to include universalisation of public distribution system and ban on futures and forward trading in foodgrains and essential items, among other things.

The CPI-M has been demanding that the government enacts a law to make the right to food a fundamental right in the backdrop of the UN Global Hunger Index, which ranks India 67th among 80 countries which suffer from acute hunger of its people. It has estimated that 25 per cent of the world's hungry today were Indians.

Besides growing inequalities, Yechury recently said widespread agrarian distress, suicides by farmers and drastic reduction in the per capita availability of foodgrains and pulses show the rise of absolute poverty among certain sections of people.