CPI(M) to launch nationwide 'Jan Andolan' protest against Modi govt's policies

Chandigarh: CPI(M) on Friday announced that the party will launch a countrywide ‘Jan Andolan’ from August 2015  to March 2016 where party activists will take to the streets to protest against Narendra Modi-led government’s policies. “From August this year to March 23, 2016 the CPI(M) will observe the birth centenary of late Left leader Harkishen Singh Surjeet and under this, the party activists will hold a Jan Andolan in the form of several kind of programmes across the country,” party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said in Chandigarh. [caption id=“attachment_2204446” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sitaram Yechury in a file photo. AFP[/caption] “Modi government is blindly following the policies adopted by USA,” he alleged. He said that in the last parliament session some 50 laws were constituted without being presented to the standing committee which is dangerous for the country. Talking about the controversial Land Acquisition Act, Yechury said that the Left failed to understand why the same BJP, which supported the Act in 2013 along with Congress, is bent upon bringing amendments to it. The CPI(M) stand is clear on land acquisition that if the land of a farmer is taken away from him, the peasant should get one part of the value of land which will be in the next 20 years following acquisition, he said. “Farmers should be made participants in any project or industry set up on their land,” he said. Hitting out at Modi, he said that the Land Acquisition Act was made for “industrialists.” Citing an example of Yamuna expressway between Delhi and Agra, he said that the one km of land on both sides of the expressway was acquired in the garb of setting a industrial corridor. “But there is no industry along the expressway…only developers are building flats,” the leader said. He said that of the total land acquired by the government in the past five years for setting up of Special Economic Zone (SEZ), no work had been started on 52 per cent of it. “Land is going in the hands of developers and farmers are being looted,” he said. “If the amendments made in the Land Act brought by Modi government is passed, then some one km of land on both sides of National highways, state highways and railway lines will be acquired which will be more than 39 per cent of total cultivable land,” he said. PTI