NEITHER the press, the eyes nor the speech are free in Kashmir (all are under surveillance), remarked Mohd Yousuf Tarigami while speaking in a press conference along with Sitaram Yechury at Delhi on December 8. Tarigami said this will not sustain and shall be perilous to the establishment.Sitaram Yechury paid condolences at the death of 43 workers in a fire in Delhi at the beginning of the press conference.  Yechury demanded an inquiry into the incident and adequate compensation to the victims.

 THE Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed by parliament despite strong objections raised by the CPI(M) and other opposition parties. The divisive bill was passed by Lok Sabha on December 9 and by Rajya Sabha on December 11. Speaking against the legislation in the lower house, CPI(M) member S Venkatesan said we have no doubt this bill will haunt India for the next several years. A secular country can never offer citizenship on the basis of religion. The idea goes against the very fundamentals of our constitution. This idea goes against the traditions followed by India all along.

THE period following the Kanpur Communist Conference witnessed the establishment of workers’ and peasants parties in various provinces of India, culminating in the formation of the All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (WPP) by the end of 1928. Though communists led these parties in various provinces, the WPP was not a Communist Party, or even a veiled Communist Party.

THIRTY thousand anganwadi workers from all over Karnataka, gathered at Tumkur on December 10 for a padayatra to Bangalore. They were prevented by hundreds of policemen deployed. But anganwadi workers refused to budge and stayed at the Glass House Maidan and other maidans of Tumkur where they had gathered.  They stayed over the night on December 10th in the maidans against the police demand to disperse, and cooked for dinner.

AT the call of Construction Workers’ Federation of India (CWFI), around 15,000 construction industry workers from all over the country converged at the national capital and marched to the Parliament Street on December 5 and organised powerful demonstrations holding high red flags, festoons, banners and demand bearing placards.It was the culmination of a three-month-long massive signature campaign covering every nook and corner of the country under the banner ‘Petition to speaker, Lok Sabha with one crore mass signatures’.