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| J&K CPI unit leaves its mark on anti-price hike rally | | |
ABID SHAH
Early Times Report
NEW DELHI, Mar 15: Three days after holding a rally against price rise near Parliament along with other like minded parties, the general secretary of Communist Party of India AB Bardhan indicated at a Press conference held here today that the red is gearing up to redeem the ground lost by it. Among other things the CPI veteran mentioned the participation of Left parties' members from Jammu and Kashmir in last Friday's rally held in the Capital which, according to him, is going to be soon followed up by courting arrests by Communists throughout the country to force Government to cut prices of essential items. This he said was decided today by the CPI national executive that met here today. M Yousuf Bhat an old party hand from Srinagar came all the way to Delhi along with nearly three-dozen other CPI activists to take part in the rally against price hike. Even as most participants left on journey back home after the rally, Bhat stayed behind at party headquarters near Bhadurshah Zafar Marg here to talk to senior party leaders. He said that he held discussions with CPI Rajya Sabha member Aziz Pasha who looks after J&K affairs on behalf of the Central unit of the party and apprised him how the issue of autonomy for the border State that was once spearheaded by Bardhan's predecessor the late Inderjit Gupta and former CPI secretary the late M Farooqui. Together the two had made Congress to act upon this since the times of the late PV Narasimha Rao. And yet this is becoming a victim of official apathy once again, courtesy the forces across the communal divide in Jammu and Kashmir.
Asked to elaborate, Bhat told this correspondent that it was M Farooqui who closely studied the J&K situation over two decades back before publishing a booklet enumerating a feasible political solution for the State. This mainly boiled down to autonomy for J&K.
The party Congress of the CPI held in the early nineteen-nineties also passed a resolution in this regard. Soon the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao held discussions with Inderjit Gupta about this. And, consequently, Rao came out with his famous "sky is the limit" offer vis-à-vis autonomy for J&K provided that separatist Hurriyat relented from instigating violent recourse to what it called to be Azadi. Bhat laments that somehow despite a report recently given in favour of autonomy by a retired judge of the Supreme Court, a section of Hurriyat opposed it as vehemently as the BJP to drive the point home that how extreme communal positions taken by bitterly opposed forces could conveniently converge to rob the people of the State of what was deemed to be best for them by successive Governments since Rao became Prime Minister and despite being endorsed by a former judge of the highest court of the land almost two decades later. Bhat also decried the virtual breakdown of work for days in State Government offices in the wake of recent strike by Government staff all over J&K. He attributed this to the apathy of the State Government that hiked the salary of legislators but ignored its commitment made to the staff or employees of the Government. He denied any role by trade unions associated with CPI in the Government staff strike, saying that "our role has mainly been confined to Public Sector or State run units though the Left has generally been sympathetic to the demands of the Government staff that went on strike.
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