The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on September 3, 2014.  THE directive/instruction issued by the Modi government asking all schools of the country to ensure that the students hear the prime minister’s address on September 5– the Teachers Day – is unprecedented.  Such an instruction has never been issued in independent India even for the mandatory addresses to the nation by the president and the prime minister.  Such an instruction is also never given for the prime minister’s Independence Day address from the Red Fort.  Cle

IN Rajya Sabha, Sitaram Yechury, while participating in a discussion on the working of the ministry of home affairs, pointed out that during 2013, as many as 823 incidents of communal disturbances took place in the country and out of these, 247 took place in Uttar Pradesh alone. And during the general elections too, the incident of Muzaffarnagar took place. During the second quarter of this year, 149 such incidents have taken place. In Maharashtra also where elections are due such incidents are happening frequently.

THE Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India jointly launched a week-long door-to-door campaign against the anti-people policies of the state and central governments across the state of Tamil Nadu. At Chennai, the campaign was inaugurated by G Ramakrishnan, CPI(M) state secretary and D Pandian, CPI secretary. They met the people by going door-to-door in the locality of Thousand Lights Area in South Chennai district. G Ramakrishnan gave pamphlets to the people. Hundreds of CPI(M)-CPI cadres with red flags walked through the streets with the leaders.

HUNDREDS of BSNL employees staged a demonstration in front of Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, the corporate office of the state-owned telecom firm in New Delhi, on August 21 expressing their strong protest against the report of Deloitte Consultants recommending retrenchment of 70,000 employees through VRS, recruitment of executives on contract basis, and reducing the number of Secondary Switching Areas (SSAs) from 334 to 167 among others. The private consultancy firm was appointed by BSNL last year to recommend suggestions for revival of the company.

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the All India Coal Workers Federation (AICWF) have welcomed the Supreme Court judgement declaring all coal block allocations since 1993 illegal on grounds of gross lack of transparency and fairness, exercise of arbitrariness and violation of guidelines, causing huge loss to the public exchequer as well as to the consumers both in industry and the common people.The CITU has said such irregularities and corrupt practices since 1993 in coal block allocations for captive use under almost all successive central governments vindicate the inbuilt, corru