ON June 24, the CPI(M) and AIKS held their 29th Victory Day public meeting at Pendhari village in the Tansa Lake area of Shahapur tehsil in Thane district. Over 2,000 adivasi peasants, including a large number of women and youth, attended with great enthusiasm.

28 years ago on June 24, 1992, the police aided by the forest officials had resorted to indiscriminate firing in this area to drive out hundreds of adivasi peasant families who had been cultivating forest land there. One bullet went right through the chest of Raghunath Bhurbhura, but he was immediately taken to a government hospital in Mumbai and was saved. Raghunath Bhurbhura was felicitated in the public meeting along with other veterans of the struggle like 92 year-old Govind Kanhat and Kashinath Kakra, by AIKS national president Ashok Dhawale, state president Kisan Gujar and state vice president Barkya Mangat respectively.

Many other peasants were injured in the 1992 police firing. But under the leadership of the CPI(M) and AIKS, defying even the police firing, the adivasi peasants strongly resisted and drove the police and forest officials out of the area. As a result of constant resistance since then, hundreds of adivasi families are still cultivating that land after 28 years and they have now already made claims for it under the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Eight new villages comprising these families have been set up in this area by the CPI(M) and AIKS, and they have got recognition from the revenue department. The adivasi residents of these new villages have also been provided with ration cards and election identity cards. All this has been achieved through a sustained struggle. June 24 is thus celebrated in this area every year as Victory Day. 

The public meeting was addressed by Ashok Dhawale, Kisan Gujar, Barkya Mangat, CPI(M) MLA from Dahanu and CITU state secretary Vinod Nikole, CITU state council member Vijay Vishe, AIDWA state joint secretary Sunita Shingda, DYFI state and district leaders Bharat Walamba, Sunil Karpat, Nitin Kakra, Prakash Choudhari and SFI district secretary Bhaskar Mhase. The meeting was presided over by AIKS state council member and CPI(M) Shahapur assembly candidate in 2019, Krishna Bhawar.

All the speakers gave a call to intensify the struggle for land, water, employment, health and other burning demands of the people. They came down heavily on the anti-people and communal policies in the Covid lockdown of the Modi-led BJP government and contrasted them with the superb policies and performance of the LDF state government of Kerala.

In Thane-Palghar district, the CPI(M) had won the Dahanu (ST) seat and had tripled its votes from around 3,500 to nearly 10,500 in the Shahapur (ST) seat in the October 2019 state assembly elections. A month before these elections, on September 9, 2019, an unprecedented 10,000-strong rally was held by the CPI(M) on the Forest Office at Shahapur in drenching rain on burning peasant issues, including the implementation of FRA. A call was given in this public meeting for both consolidation and expansion of our influence by vastly strengthening the independent work of the Party and all the mass fronts.

The meeting began by paying homage to the 20 Indian soldiers killed in the conflict on the India-China border and to the victims of Covid, and the hundreds of migrant workers in the country who had died of hunger and accidents.