MEETING OF THE CPI-ML ORGANIZED IN PATNA

MEETING OF THE CPI-ML ORGANIZED IN PATNA

13-AUG-ENG 1

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

PATNA-------------------------The meeting of the Central Committee of CPI ML started today in Patna. Party General Secretary, Dipankar Bhattacharya, senior leader, Swadesh Bhattacharya, V. Shankar, Sucheta Hai, Shweta Kumari, Pratima Inghap, former MLA of Bagodar Vinod Singh, Bihar State Secretary Kunal, Dhirendra Jha, Amar, MP from Karakat Rajaram Singh, Shashi Yadav, Meena Tiwari, Satyadev Ram, Gopal Ravidas, Sandeep Saurabh, Virendra Prasad Gupta, Arun Singh and Central Committee members from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand etc. participated in the meeting.

In the meeting, there was a deep and detailed discussion on the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) process going on in Bihar and its results so far. The party expressed deep concern and anger and said that many serious complaints have been sent to the Election Commission on the party pad from our side, but the Commission is claiming that no political party has lodged any complaint so far. This attitude is not only misleading but also against the basic spirit of democracy. The Commission should clarify what kind of objection it will consider as an official complaint. Keeping the public and political parties in the dark is fatal to the democratic process, CPI(ML) demanded that the Commission make the entire SIR process transparent and take public cognizance of all objections.

It was decided in the meeting that a statewide, intensive and agitational campaign will be run in the next 15 days to protect the voting rights of migrant workers removed from SIR and voters wrongly deleted. Under this, all the MLAs, public representatives and workers of the party will get the names of the affected people re-registered in the voter list by getting Form-6 filled and will expose the stubbornness and arbitrariness of the Election Commission in front of the public.

The party said that documents are now being sought from the remaining 7.24 crore voters as well. Prasan had earlier assured that special camps would be set up to make residential and caste certificates for the needy, but even after 11 days have passed, not a single camp has been organized. It is clear that the government is deliberately depriving people of the necessary documents so that a large number of voters can be deprived of their right to vote. CPI(ML) announced that this issue will be given the form of a big movement.

The situation of SIR in other parts of the country was also discussed in the meeting, especially in West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu. It was clarified that the propaganda that the names of 7 lakh migrant workers from Bihar have been added to the voter list of Tamil Nadu is completely misleading and untrue. The names of these workers should be in the voter list of Bihar only - otherwise this situation will become like "neither home nor ghat".

In West Bengal, Bengali-speaking migrant workers are being harassed by calling them "Bangladeshis", which the party termed as completely wrong, discriminatory and unacceptable. In Bengal too, there is widespread unrest and discontent about SIR.

CPIML made it clear that a nationwide resistance will be raised against this organized attack on the right to vote and it will be turned into a decisive battle to protect the democratic rights of the people.