GENERAL secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury, asserted that the Mahajana Padayatra being conducted by the Party in Telangana is intended for identifying the problems being faced by the people and for social justice and gave a call for building powerful movements of the people for getting assurances given by the rulers implemented.  Mahajana Padayatra, which had commenced on October 17 with a team of CPI(M) leaders led by state secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram, already covered a distance of about one thousand kilometers during the first 40 days. It reached Chegunta in Medak district on November 27 where Yechury participated in it, trekking a distance of three kilometers, and addressed a public meeting. If only the SCs, STs, BCs and minorities, who constitute about 93 percent of the population in the state, are developed, Telangana would be treated as developed, Yechury said.  Reminding that the heroic armed struggle of the peasants of Telangana in the late forties had brought the issue of land reforms on agenda in the country, he said that with the spirit of that struggle, powerful movements of the people should be conducted for building a new India and a new Telangana.  Explaining that exploitation that has been going on in the name of caste has been intensified due to neo-liberal economic policies, Yechury underlined the imperative of the Red and the Blue working together as a step forward for bringing about a transformation that would ensure all the powers guaranteed by the constitution to the downtrodden people. Sitaram Yechury demanded that five acres of land to each family of SCs and STs be given, in addition to implementing reservations, in the direction of achieving economic equality.

Coming down heavily on the anti-people and pro-corporate policies of the Modi government, Yechury termed demonetisation of currency notes of higher denomination a thoughtless act, as a result of which 75 people had already lost their lives in the country while waiting for withdrawing money from the banks, with the government failing to take required steps. Though Prime Minister Modi had claimed that by demonetization, black money can be arrested, funding for terrorists can be stopped, fake currency can be seized and corruption and scams can be put to an end, nothing in that direction has been achieved so far, Yechury said. Though Modi had admitted that 90 percent of black money was abroad and that funding for terrorists was taking place online and had with him a list of bank accounts abroad of Indians who stashed away black money, it is not being made public even in the parliament, he said.  Explaining that workers and farming community were worst hit by demonetisation, general secretary of the CPI(M) said that four lakh daily workers had already lost their livelihood and farmers were forced to sell away their paddy for about half of the minimum support price of Rs 1541 per quintal. Even while claiming that there is no money to waive loans of about Rs 75,000 crores taken by the farmers, the Modi government, during the last two-and-a-half years, has written off dues of loans taken by industrialists to the tune of Rs1.12 lakh crores, he criticised.

Tammineni Veerabhadram said despite the outbursts of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao against the Mahajana Padayatra, the people have been welcoming the padayatra at every village and submitting memoranda to get their problems addressed.  He questioned the impropriety of spending Rs 56 crore from the public exchequer for constructing a new official residence for the chief minister, while failing to construct the promised double-bedroom houses for the people. Lashing out at the political turncoats who shifted their loyalties after winning elections from one party to another political party, Veerabhadram underlined the need for cleansing politics completely. Telangana does not mean KCR; it means the communists, he said. Veerabhadram said the Mahajana Padayatra would conclude on March 12 next and thereafter social struggle would commence, expressing the aspiration that the communists, Ambedkarites and other social organisations of the downtrodden would join hands in it.  Medak district secretary of the CPI(M) A Mallesh presided over the meeting. Earlier, Yechury and other leaders paid homage to the first secretary of the Medak district committee of the undivided Communist Party Kewal Kishen at his Samadhi and later garlanded the statues of Ambedkar and Babu Jagjivan Ram and paid homage to them.