ACCUSING the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of going soft on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), G Ramakrishnan, Tamilnadu state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has questioned why the two parties, during their election campaigns, had been refraining from criticising the BJP and Narendra Modi. Speaking to presspersons at Nagarcoil and later addressing a huge campaign meeting at Thuckalay town in Kanniyakumari constituency on March 31, for the party’s candidate A V Bellarmin, Ramakrishnan said Modi was projecting Gujarat as a model state. But it was a fallacy. Only the corporate sector was reaping benefits there and not the common people. A 108 years old agriculture university of Gujarat was recently given to a corporate house for construction of a five star hotel there. The budget allocations for education and health in Gujarat were quite meagre. On various social and economic indicators like employment, education, health, housing, living environment and public safety, Gujarat lagged behind Kerala and Tamilnadu, Ramakrishnan said. While the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was totally corrupt, Ramakrisnan said the BJP was no less corrupt. Moreover, it has a communal orientation that promotes disharmony among the people of various religions and castes. The Left parties have been striving to provide an alternative to these parties, said Ramakrishnan. The CPI(M) leader cautioned that implementation of the Tamilnadu Preservation of Private Forest Act, based on the Kasturirangan committee recommendations, and of the Coastal Regulatory Zone regulations would affect the small and marginal farmers as well as fishermen in Kanyakumari district. CPI and JD(S) leaders also spoke in the meeting. Earlier on the day G Ramakrishnan kick-started his campaign at Rajapalayam in Virudhunagar constituency for the CPI(M) candidate K Samuel Raj. Here he questioned the silence maintained by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and chief minister Ms Jayalalithaa, during her election campaign, on the “communal” aspect and “wrong” economic policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party. “Ms Jayalalithaa, who has been coming down heavily on the Congress for its wrong economic policies, has been silent on the BJP which is also following the same economic policies. Both parties are two sides of the same coin,” he said. Nor has the chief minister spoken about the communal facet of the BJP, he said. The Congress and the BJP shared common policies on foreign direct investment in retail sector and on the question of increasing the price of natural gas by 100 percent. “Reliance will make an additional Rs 1.80 lakh crore by this revision of price,” he said. Stating that the BJP was not an alternative to the Congress, he said only the Left parties could work for an alternative to the Congress-led government. Similarly, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam too was not an alternative to the national parties as its leader M Karunanidhi had been saying that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, was his good friend and was working hard. “Mr Karunanidhi has also expressed his willingness to support the Congress after the elections,” he said. On this occasion, Ramakrishnan blamed both the DMK and the AIADMK for the poor power situation in the state, and said both the parties did not put in the required efforts for generating additional power when they were in power over the last ten years.   POWER CRISIS Earlier, on March 30, G Ramakrishnan said in a statement that when the AIADMK came to power in 2011, it promised to resolve the power crisis within a short span. However, in a recent speech in Madurai, the chief minister, Ms Jayalalithaa, asked the people not to worry about the power shortage, which she (once more) guaranteed would be set right very soon. In Coimbatore which he toured from March 28 onward, Ramakrishnan said the people were facing four-hour outages which also affected the small and medium enterprises. In Tirupur too, which is an important textiles hub, power cuts have affected the industries. Ramakrishnan said that no notable power projects were implemented between 2001 and 2011 when the two Dravidian parties alternated in the saddle. “But now the two parties are trading charges against each other to escape responsibility,” he alleged, adding that these two were also responsible for increasing the power tariff. The CPI(M) leader said while the financial situation of the Electricity Board was cited as a reason for the domestic tariff hike, the two parties were silent about the capacity of the board to purchase power from private producers at the rate of Rs 12 per unit.   HUGE RESPONSE During his campaign meetings, the CPI(M) state secretary proudly claimed that in all the 18 constituencies in the state where the Left parties --- the CPI(M) and the CPI --- were contesting, there was good response from the people as well as the cadres and supporters of the Left. “Surely we will create a new chapter in the political history of Tamilnadu," he said. This claim of G Ramakrishnan was reflected during the filing of nominations by the Left candidates. On March 29, P R Natarajan and B Vikraman, CPI(M) candidates from Coimbatore and Maduari respectively and K Balasubramaniyam of the CPI in Cuddalore constituency filed their nominations. On that day, thousands of people gathered in all the three centres in support of the candidates. On April 2, U Vasuki, A V Bellarmine, S Tamil Selvi, K Samuel Raj, N Pandi, S Sridhar and G Anandhan, CPI(M) candidates in North Chennai, Kanniyakumari, Thanjavur, Virudhunagar, Dindigul, Tiruchi and Villupuram constituencies respectively, filed their nomination papers. In these centres too, huge crowds of people and supporters from various walks of life gathered to greet the candidates. From the first week of April onward, national leaders of the CPI(M) and CPI, like Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, Brinda Karat, K Varadharajan, A K Padmanaban, Sudahkar Reddy and D Raja, are going to address various public meetings across the state. Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar is also to come to the state for election campaign. CPI(M) state secretary G Ramakrishnan and Central Committee members like T K Rangarajan, Sudha Sundararaman,  A Soundrarajan and K Balakrishnan are engaged in an intense election campaign for the Left candidates.