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CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the BJP was trying to create a “surreal world” in which people-centric issues such as agrarian distress and unemployment are not discussed. He said communal polarisation was being unleashed to help create such a world. Yechury was talking to reporters here on Wednesday after a two-day meeting of his party’s Politburo.
Ahead of the press conference, despite heavy police presence, two activists of Hindu Sena, a right-wing outfit, tried to attack Yechury. The CPI(M) leader’s security officer and staff at the AKG Bhawan protected him from the attack. Two of the attackers were later detained by the police.
“Without violence, without terror, the RSS has never been able to increase its political influence. And these tactics have been answered by the people of India in the past and we will be answering it again,” he said. “We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh’s goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win,” he added.
Yechury said that in celebrating its three years in power, the BJP was, in fact, celebrating unemployment and farmers distress. He said the youth were promised the creation of two crore jobs every year. “Instead what we see is that job growth in the industrial sector is the lowest in eight years. As far as rural employment is concerned, the government itself has admitted that every one of these three years it has refused to release sums of ₹20,000-crore plus under the MNREGA, that is, they are denying wages for those poor people who are already suffering,” he added.
He said six farmers had died as a result of police firing in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, for asking the BJP to fulfil its poll promises. “They were promised an MSP that would be one-and-a-half times the cost of inputs as measured by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. This has not been done. As a result of its other policies like reducing the import duties on agricultural products, our farmers are increasingly finding their harvests not being able to meet both their own family’s needs and to service their debt,” he added.
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