THE death of 40 jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the horrific attack in Pulwama has caused sorrow and outrage among people throughout the country. Thousands of people attended the funerals of the killed jawans who were drawn from 16 states of the country.
THE three-day strike of the employees and officers of BSNL, which started on February 18, 2019, is a huge success. It was called by the All Unions and Associations of BSNL (AUAB). Almost all the telephone exchanges, administrative offices, customer service centres, etc, remained closed throughout the country, on all the three days. The government invoked the draconian ESMA to suppress the strike. However, it could not deter the employees from joining the strike en-masse.
ON February 19, student organisations including SFI joined a protest action in the national capital that saw the participation of teachers and non-teaching staff. Thousands of students, teachers, non-teaching employees and parents from different states converged at Delhi on February 19 to march under the banner of the Joint Forum for Movement on Education (JFME) and demanded a reversal of the privatisation policies that have led to social exclusion and denial of rights. The JFME rally was held with the slogan of ‘save education, save nation’.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on February 13
THE report tabled in the Parliament on the last day it met before the general election by the comptroller and auditor general `On Capital Acquisition in Indian Air Force’, raises more questions than providing answers.
THE basic income scheme that is in the air these days, which amounts to handing over a certain sum of money to every household to ensure that it reaches a threshold cash income, is an extremely flawed scheme.
OPPOSING the proposed privatisation of six airports in the country, Tapan Sen, general secretary of CITU wrote a letter to the union minister for civil aviation, on February 11.
It is shocking to note that the government of India has decided to privatise six more airports of the country that are functioning under the Airports Authority of India through the so-called PPP route. The airports proposed to be privatised at the moment are Trivandrum, Guwahati, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangalore as per the reports received.
THE budget session began as usual with the president’s address to joint session of parliament on January 31, 2019. After this, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met and made obituary references and adjourned for the day. On the next day, minister for finance Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget 2019-20 in Lok Sabha and subsequently it was laid in Rajya Sabha, along with the Fiscal Policy Statement 2019-20. Rajya Sabha hardly conducted any transactions during this time due to protests by members on various issues.
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) met on February 8-9, 2019 at New Delhi. It has issued the following statement:
RISING PEOPLE’S PROTESTS
The Polit Bureau salutes the people of Kerala and West Bengal on the manner in which they responded to the calls given by the CPI(M) and the Left parties in their respective states.