THE killing of 14 civilians in Mon, Nagaland by a special force of the Assam Rifles has brought into sharp relief the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a lawless law that enables the security forces to act with impunity, which has led to atrocity after atrocity on the civilian population in the North-East.  Eight young men, who were coal miners, were travelling in a van when they were ambushed by a special force, who were purportedly targeting armed insurgents.  The killing of six of the miners led to protests by the local people, which resulted in eight more deaths due to firing b

THE MGNREGS was introduced by the UPA-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left which was supporting that government from outside. It was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum of only 100 days of employment in a year, and that too for just one member of a rural household. But within those restrictions it conferred an economic right: employment could not be refused and if it was not provided within a certain period then the person seeking employment had to be paid a compensation.

THE 23rd state conference of Punjab state committee of CPI(M) was held at Ludhiana from November 24-25, 2021. Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) general secretary  along with Nilotpal Basu, Polit Bureau member and in-charge of Punjab state committee  remained present on both days to  guide  the conference  on behalf of the Central Committee. Gurchetan Singh Bassi unfurled the Party Flag.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on November 30THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) condemns and rejects the utterly false and malicious accusations being made by the BJP MLA of Loni, Ghaziabad against Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat of  “encouraging cow slaughter” of “creating communal disharmony”  etc., and trying to pressure police to file an FIR against her.This is after a CPI(M) delegation led by Brinda Karat visited the homes of the victims of the recent police atrocity in Loni,  where the police inflicted identical injuries on seven young men, all Muslims in

OMICRON, a new SARS-CoV-2 strain, first detected in the Gauteng province of South Africa, has been acknowledged by WHO as a “variant of concern”. Already, cases have been reported from other countries, making clear that Omicron is unlikely to be contained geographically. If it outperforms Delta in creating new infections, it may then replace Delta as the dominant variant in Covid-19 infections, as Delta has done to the earlier variants.