A joint meeting of 3 Left parties—CPIML, CPI, and CPM—was held at the CPM State office at the Comrade Purna Chandra Smriti Bhavan in Dehradun. It was decided that Left parties would fight the coming Lok Sabha elections in Uttarakhand jointly. CPI will fight from Pauri, CPM from Tehri and CPIML from Nainital seats. After the elections also, the Left parties will continue to organize joint struggles on the issues of working people. The Left will strengthen its claim through joint people’s struggles to strengthen the people’s alternative in Uttarakhand politics.
The Left parties said that there has been an increase in terror attacks under the Modi regime. Incidents of soldiers and civilians being killed on the border have increased enormously. In order to hide its dismal failure, the Modi government is dividing the country through communal hatred and warmongering. Soldiers martyred for the country are getting neither pension nor the status of martyr. The Modi government has proved a disaster for this country. Students and youth have been shut out from education and employment; farmers’ suicides continue and have increased; workers are reeling under lay-offs and amendments to weaken labour laws; attacks on women, dalits and minorities have increased; adivasis and forest dwellers are being evicted from forests; the reservation for dalits and OBCs enshrined in the Constitution is being attacked. This is the sum total of the Modi Raj’s achievements.
The Left parties further said that the ‘double-engine’ government in Uttarakhand is only moving at double speed in the direction of selling Uttarakhand’s resources. The government does not have money to give employment to unemployed youth, but the government is very easily waiving crores of rupees due from former Chief Ministers on their palatial homes. The Left parties supported the agitation against the formation of the anti-people Development Authority and termed the fixing of minimum wages for workers at Rs 8300 (after 7 years) as a cruel and grotesque joke. They added that recently many people in the country including Uttarakhand have lost their lives due to poisonous liquor. Elections have become a time when political parties compete with each other to bribe the people with money and liquor. Therefore, in order to keep the elections free from the influence of liquor, the Left parties urged the Election Commission to close liquor shops from the date of notification of elections till the date of the results and to ensure that no liquor is distributed during the elections.
It was decided at the meeting that the Left parties would campaign jointly for the LS election and national leaders of all 3 Left parties would also participate in the joint campaign.
