THE NDA government has decided to privatise five airports at Lucknow, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore and Ahmadabad and decided to hand over these airports to Adani Group. Raising the issue in Rajya Sabha during Zero Hour on June 24, CPI(M) MP K K Ragesh said that LDF government in Kerala is willing to take over the Thiruvananthapuram airport. “It is regrettable that the state government is being considered on the same footing as the Adani Group,” in the auction, he said.

THE winter session of Parliament began with discussions on ‘Commitment to India's Constitution’ as part of the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of B R Ambedkar. On the first day of the session on November 26, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day after making obituary reference on count of death of a sitting member, while the Lok Sabha witnessed uproarious scene after Union Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh, initiating the discussion, said ‘secularism’ was the most "misused" word. Leader of CPI(M) in Rajya Sabha Sitaram Yechury spoke on ‘Commitment to India's Constitution’.

Below are the edited excerpts of the speech made by Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) leader in Rajya Sabha on ‘Commitment to Constitution’ on 27 November 2015.EVEN before this session was announced, our Party had demanded that Dr Ambedkar’s 125th birthday should merit a special session, so that some new laws, which we think are important, can be implemented. The attacks on dalits should be looked at. This government’s statistics itself, on the dalits, since 2014, ever since this government has come to power, show that atrocities on them have gone up by 19 percent.