IN the ongoing attack on opposition parties, TMC miscreants brutally beat up veteran Forward Block leader and former food and supplies minister Naren Dey in Hooghly's Dhaniakhali on 8th December evening. The Forward Bloc was holding a meeting at their office premises when the attack took place. Former MLA from Dhaniakhali, Ajit Patra, was also injured in the attack.
IN the wake of the terrible communal violence in Muzaffarnagar and the resultant polarisation not only in Western Uttar Pradesh but in many parts of North India, the CPI(M) state committee decided to hold a series of Conventions for Communal Harmony in as many districts as possible. Very successful conventions have been organised in Khanpur, Bulandshahr (December 7), Muzaffarnagar (December 8) and Jalalabad, Bijnor (December 9).
ON December 2, 2013, an impressive rally of several thousand people marched in Mumbai around three main demands. These were: immediate enactment of a law against black magic and superstition in the ensuing session of the state assembly at Nagpur beginning December 9; immediate arrest of the killers of Dr Narendra Dabholkar and of the diabolical forces behind this murder; and stringent action against communal and obscurantist forces.
ON December 9, 2013, a condolence meeting organised at A K Gopalan Bhavan, the CPI(M) headquarters in New Delhi, paid homage to Nelson Mandela, the legendary figure who led the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Addressing the party workers on this occasion, Sitaram Yechury, member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, underlined some aspects of Nelson Mandela’s life and work which the bourgeois media, even while eulogising Mandela, seeks to hide from the people.
ACCORDING to a report issued by the secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea on October 24, 2013, a South Korean conservative group has urged the country’s ministry of justice, often considered to be a pliant body, to form a "team of experts to take measures against political parties and organisations violating (the) constitution," and has staged the farce of making a legal examination to facilitate the disbanding of the Unified Progressive Party.
IT is 7.30 in the evening and we have to rush for our school at 8.00. Yes, school! These days, we are going to a school after work to learn how to read – both the alphabet and the world. Some young people have started it some days ago and wanted all of us to come. We were shy in the beginning, but after two days, became very fond of it as they are telling us many new things happening around us.
THE SPECIAL Air India plane carrying a six-member delegation headed by President Pranab Mukherjee, to attend the international memorial service for Nelson Mandela on December 10, landed in the midst of heavy rain at the Waterkloof military airbase, Pretoria, South Africa. This was once a notorious military base for the apartheid South African government that mounted its oppressive air attacks against the non-white South African people whom they mercilessly exploited and segregated.
THE Tamilnadu state committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has urged the centre to put on hold the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report by K Kasturirangan, and review it after wider discussions to prevent the possible displacement of lakhs of tribal population.
Talking to reporters on the resolutions adopted by the three-day long meeting of the state committee, CPI(M) state secretary G Ramakrishnan said protection of ecology should not be done at the cost of the livelihood of tribal people.
A RUMOUR was spread that a dalit boy teased a caste Hindu girl. Without waiting for anything, more than 100 people barged into the dalit area and torched six houses and damaged more than fifty houses. This is not an odd incident that can be brushed aside as some eve-teasing and reaction case. In Dindigul district, Nilakottai taluk, there are two villages called Nadupatti and Kariyampatti. Dalits live in Nadupatti and the caste Hindus live in Kariyampatti. On November 25, a rumour was spread that a boy from Nadupatti had teased a girl from Kariyampatti.
ON December 5, 2013, a five-member delegation from the Odisha state unit of the CPI(M) met the president of India at New Delhi, followed by a meeting with the union home minister the next day. The delegation consisted of the CPI(M) state secretary Janardan Pati, its state secretariat members Santosh Das, Ali Kishore Patnaik and Bishnu Mohanty, and former MLA Laxman Munda. It was led by CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury who is leader of the CPI(M) group in Rajya Sabha and by Basudeb Acharia, leader of the CPI(M) group in Lok Sabha.