DEFENCE Minister Manohar Parrikar has given a categorical assurance to a group of women officers of the Navy, who met him on September 28 in New Delhi, along with CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat, that he fully supports the September 4 High Court judgement for their immediate reinstatement as permanent commission officers. He told the delegation that he would also take appropriate measures to see that there was no appeal against the judgement by the Navy.

IN a significant development, workers of Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) elected the CITU as the sole bargaining agent in an election, which went beyond an event of recognition of union in a factory. The ruling party of the state created an atmosphere of terror, not only in the public sector plant but in the entire Durgapur and exercised all efforts to win the election. But TMC-affiliated INTTUC was squarely defeated in the secret ballot.

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on September 30.THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the mob attack which resulted in the gruesome killing of a man and critically injuring his son. Using the false allegation that beef was being kept and consumed in a Muslim household in Bisara village in Dadri, a mob attacked the house of Mohammad Akhlaq.This horrible incident is the outcome of a sustained communal campaign regarding cow slaughter and against beef consumption conducted by the Hindutva outfits.

THE pace of communalisation has quickened in the past few weeks, both through the official level and by the Hindutva outfits on the ground. Soon after the “Samanvay Baithak” of the RSS held in the first week of September, the minister for culture, Mahesh Sharma came out with a series of pronouncements regarding cultural pollution by western values and about restoring Indian culture based on the thinking established in the Gita, Mahabharat and the Ramayana.

FOUNDED on October 3, 1945 at the Paris Congress, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is celebrating the glorious 70 years of its foundation. The setting up of the World Federation of Trade Unions was a major victory of the champions of proletarian internationalism and the unity of the international workers’ movement. Right from its very foundation, the new World Trade Union Organisation has been characteristically different from those which had previously existed.