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CPI to launch stir against BJP in February

The Communist Party of India has announced that it would launch a countrywide mass campaign in February to unseat the Bharatiya Janta Party-led coalition government.

According to CPI general secretary A B Bardhan the party will organise public meetings, rallies and other forms of activities through the first week of February.

During the campaign party units will enrol volunteers for a ''jail bharo'' movement which will be conducted from February 15 to 18 at district and taluk levels throughout the country.

Bardhan said the party intends to enrol at least 500,000 volunteers for this satyagraha against the ''anti-national, anti-people economic policies of the BJP government and its communal aggressiveness.''

As a culmination to the campaign, the party will organise a march to Parliament on March 15 during the Budget session in which workers, farmers and students from all over the country will participate.

Bardhan said although the BJP which was in power by default it has not desisted from pushing through its ''sinister designs'' which included attempts to communalise education, attack civil democratic institutions and stir new controversies.

He said inner conflicts within the BJP-led coalition which have thwarted Cabinet expansion have only driven it to desperation and expose the ''communal-fascist'' polices of the Sangh Parivar.

Bardhan said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's call for a national debate on conversions was only meant to provide an alibi for its government in Gujarat and divert attention from the anti-Christian attacks in that state.

The CPI leader also criticised Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani for making claims that 75 per cent of funds from foreign countries go to Christian missionaries.

''Such statements are only meant to stoke communalism and provide grist to the mill of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and other outfits,'' he said.

He charged the government with bypassing Parliament and ruling the country through ordinances to abide by the dictates of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation.

The government's stand on opening up the insurance sector and amending the Patents Act, he said, is ''nothing but a sell out''.

UNI

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