AT a largely attended public meeting in Jind on March 17, the general secretaries of CPI(M) and CPI – Sitaram Yechury and S Sudhakar Reddy – launched the joint election campaign of the two communist parties in Haryana.

Sitaram Yechury introduced Sukhbir Singh, CPI(M) candidate from Hissar and Arun Kumar, CPI candidate from Ambala Lok Sabha constituency to the gathering. He urged the people to return the two to the next Lok Sabha if they wanted their demands to be brought to the notice of the highest forum in the country.

Yechury then proceeded to launch a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling party BJP. He ridiculed Modi for his fake "Hum bhi Chowkidar" campaign. He held the PM and the ruling party responsible for the large number of suicides being committed by the "annadata" farmers.  He lambasted Modi for trying to pass on the responsibility for all the ills plaguing the country to the Congress Party.  Without trying to be an apologist for the Congress, Yechury said that the party had been made to pay for its sins by being voted out by the people at the last elections.  Now it was time for BJP to answer what the party had done during the last five years to redress the grievances of the people.  They had to tell the people what they had done to remove the large scale unemployment that had made the lives of the youth of the country hell.

Yechury shamed the ruling party for the rape and murder of even a three year old girl child.  He wanted to know what Modi had to say for dalits and Muslims being made targets of mob lynching. He was angry that all national assets were being privatised and handed over to Modi's corporate friends so much so that today 1 per cent people control 73 per cent of national wealth and the process is still in an upward spiral.

The speaker said that there was no dearth of resources in the country, yet large sections of the population were languishing under abject poverty because of the accelerated pro-corporate policies pursued by Modi.  He cited the instance of the embezzlement in the purchase of fighter jets for the Air Force from France wherein Rs 30,000 crores had been handed over to Modi accolyte Anil Ambani who is experiencing dire financial problems.  What therefore the nation needs is not a loudmouthed "neta" but a change in "neeti", that is policies.

Yechury exposed the attractively packaged so-called pension scheme announced by Modi in which the people pay to the banks for thirty years so that they may get a pension upon reaching the age of superannuation.  What the scheme does not reveal is that for thirty years the interest accrued on people's money with the banks will be used to fund the corporates.  The acronym PM, therefore, really stands for pocketmaar.   

Yechury accused Modi's accomplice Haryana CM Khattar of vitiating the atmosphere in the state by trying to create divisions among the people along caste and religious lines.  He saluted the armed forces for the brave Balakot action which united the while country against terrorism.  However, BJP had frittered away the gains in trying to make political gains out of it by dubbing criticism of their government anti-national.  He told the PM that the responsibility of the "chowkidar" is to safeguard his charge, in this case the people and the nation, not to weaken them by following divisive policies.  He also told the applauding audience that the real master of the "chowkidar" of the nation were the people.  If they find that the "chowkidar" is not doing his duty properly, they, as masters, are duty bound to replace him.  On this score the reverse count has begun for Modi and his party. The people are going to defeat him for his failure to safeguard the nation and their interests. In doing so, they will be only discharging their responsibility.  

S Sudhakar Reddy pointed out that the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in the terrorist act in Pulwama had escalated tensions between India and Pakistan. The Indian Air Force retaliated in Balakot and the entire nation stood solidly behind them. However, BJP was trying to make political capital out of it with its President Amit Shah claiming that 250 terrorists had been killed in the surgical air strike while the fact of the matter is that the Air Force Chief has refused to verify the numbers. 

Sudhakar Reddy next said that unemployment, even among the highly educated, was at an all time high. He wanted to know where was the huge black money that Modi had promised to bring back from the Swiss banks.

Reddy said that nobody was opposing the cow protection moves. Still, the Muslim minority was being targeted in the name of cow protection. Reddy regretted that secular intellectuals like Gowri Lankesh, Govind Pansare, Dabholkar and Prof Kalburgi had been murdered by elements enjoying the patronage of the ruling party.  He wanted a stop to this anarchy.

He ridiculed BJP President Amit Shah's claim that his party was invincible by pointing out that ever since coming to power at the centre, they had lost assembly elections in most states, most recently in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh ad Chhattisgarh.

As for the ruling party claim that the opposition did not have a leader, Reddy declared that alliances had always been formed post election in the past and had ruled the country under Morarji Desai, V P Singh, H D Devegowda and I K Gujral.  This time, too, there would be no problem.

Earlier CPI(M) Polit Bureau member in-charge of Haryana, Nilotpal Basu said that the PM had been on a sops announcement spree as the next Lok Sabha elections were drawing near and the Election Commission had given him ample time by withholding announcement of election dates to suit his convenience.  He wondered how people close to a PM who calls himself the "chowkidar" of the nation managed to flee the country without repaying bank loans to the tune of thousands of crores in each case.  He pointed out that not a single of the tall promises made by Modi during the last Lok Sabha election campaign had been fulfilled and his crony Amit Shah now shamelessly said that pre-election promises are "jumlas" not necessarily meant to be fulfilled.  Basu also drew attention to the removal of a large number of very senior government functionaries inconvenient to the ruling dispensation.  Prominent among them were two governors of the Reserve Bank of India and director of the CBI.  They had to pay the price for taking steps to expose frauds at the highest government level.

The rally was also addressed by the state secretaries of the two parties - Surender Malik of CPI(M) and Daryao Singh Kashyap of CPI.  CPI(M) state secretariat member Inderjeet Singh and the two candidates being put up by the Left parties – Sukhbir Singh and Arun Kumar also spoke. CPI(M) state secretariat member Jai Bhagwan conducted the stage.