New Delhi, March 17
Coming out strongly against the BJP- led NDA and policies of the Congress, the CPM today said it would strive for the formation of a secular government at the Centre in the post-poll scenario.
Releasing the manifesto, CPM General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet said the party was in the favour of reviewing economic policies pursued during the past decade, would offer a right to strike even to government employees, make the right to work a fundamental right, favour only a court solution to the Ayodhya dispute and cancel Indo-US military cooperation.
“We are trying to persuade secular parties to see reason and understand that no single party can take the responsibility for bringing about a change in the (prevailing) coalition of forces in the country. To defeat the BJP, all secular forces will have to cooperate and unit,” he said.
Asserting that the NDA existed “merely for providing a cover for the BJP rule and the party was an instrument to fulfill aims of the RSS,” he said the NDA agenda was a “farce enacted on the people. Even this opportunist combine is coming unstuck with eight parties leaving the NDA”.
When asked that their effort to rope secular parties had failed in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, he said: “Our efforts will continue. We will play a role in helping the formation of a secular government. What that role will be, we will decide when the time comes after the elections.”
The manifesto promised an employment-oriented economic policy and central legislation for agricultural workers to protect their basic rights, guaranteeing minimum wages and pension and other special benefits.
Calling for a reversal of the Vajpayee government’s “pro-imperialist foreign policy” and cancellation of the Indo-US military cooperation which “links up India with the US global strategy”, the CPM said it was for an independent and non-aligned foreign policy which would defend India from imperialist pressures.
Other issues raised in the manifesto include higher income tax for the rich; revert to the nuclear policy of using nuclear energy for civilian and peaceful purposes; a comprehensive set of economic policies to replace the existing ones; a new land reform policy to dilute land ceiling laws for takeover and distribution of surplus land above the ceiling and handing over cultivable waste land to landless.
It also called for higher public investment in agriculture and infrastructure, review of power and telecom policies in tune with interests of national development, adequate public outlays for power, communications, railways and road development and halt to privatisation of profitable public-sector units and revival of sick public-sector units by a suitable package of measures, including reorienting the government policy on tax concession, order placement and credit.
