People's Democracy

Students-Youth Rally In Kolkata

B Prashant

TILL the Narendra Modi-led regime in Gujarat is allowed to continue, a free and fair elections can never be a possibility. This was said by Bengal chief minister and Polit Bureau member of the CPI (M) while addressing a huge rally of students and youth in Kolkata in the afternoon of September 15. Captain (Dr.) Laxmi Sahgal, too, addressed the rally.

A severe rainstorm that lashed the metropolis for close to an hour could not diminish the enthusiasm and fervour of the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who thronged the Esplanade area and raised slogans against the BJP-led union government’s misdeeds. The rallying slogan of the meeting was:"Resist the anti-national and communal policies of the BJP-led union government."

Chief minister Bhattacharjee said that the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government "has covered itself in shame by shamelessly taking out a so-called Gaurav Yatra at a time when communal tension is allowed to run high in that state as a political ploy." Perhaps Modi and his henchmen feel exalted by the murder of the innocents that took place in Gujarat, commented Buddhadeb.

The Bengal chief minister crucially drew the attention of the rally to a very cogent point about the Supreme Court’s decision to ask for the opinion of the different state governments on three constitutional points that arose out of the spat orchestrated by the BJP-led union government against the Chief Election Commissioner Lyngdoh.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee made it amply clear that the response of the Bengal Left Front government "will certainly go to strengthen the position the CEC has taken over Gujarat polls. Bhattacharjee said that he had already spoken with the law minister of the LF government. And he was of the firm opinion that in view of the fact that it had been the Modi government that had orchestrated the mass murders in Gujarat, elections could never be free and fair till the Modi regime was allowed to continue in office.

Addressing the rally, Captain (Dr) Laxmi Sahgal recalled the bygone days of the country’s freedom struggle and urged upon the students and youth to take a more active part in keeping intact the integrity and sovereignty of the nation and to resist the anti-national designs of the BJP and its running mates.

Describing the BJP regime at the centre as a puppet in the hands of the US imperialism, Sahgal stressed on the urgent need to put up a stiff resistance nationwide against the anti-people policies of the BJP-led NDA government who were out to put the sovereignty of the nation in jeopardy.

The student-youth leadership of the SFI, DYFI, AISB, AISF, PSU, AIYL, RYB, RYF, and AIYF also addressed the rally while the noted popular singer Ajit Pandey sang revolutionary songs. (INN)