The Hindu : Kerala News : Communist parties urged to join anti-hartal movement

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 17, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Communist parties urged to join anti-hartal movement

By our Special Correspondent

KOZHIKODE DEC. 16. The Congress leader M.M. Hassan today appealed to the Communist parties to support his proposal to launch a movement against forced hartals.

Speaking to presspersons here Mr. Hassan said Communist parties should cooperate with his efforts to build up people's resistance against attempts to force people to observe hartal.

Mr. Hassan plans to stage a 24-hour sathyagraha in Thiruvananthapuram on December 23 to garner support for a people's movement to resist hartals imposed against people's will. It will be inaugurated by Malayalam writer T. Padmanabhan.

``It will be the beginning of a movement against hartal,'' Mr. Hassan claimed. It will be followed by conventions in Kozhikode and Kochi.

To boycott hartals

In Kozhikode, the Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi will organise the meet. Its president, T. Naziruddin, had already announced that merchants would boycott hartal calls in future.

Similar programmes would follow in other towns.

Mr Hassan pointed out he had held a similar programme nine years ago at Palayam Junction in Thiruvananthapuram. He also moved a private members' Bill on hartal then in the Assembly. His programmes had triggered a series of moves resulting in the Kerala High Court declaring bandhs illegal.

More recently came the High Court order asking the Government to pay compensation for damage to life and property that happened during hartals and to recover the money spent for that purpose from those who inflicted the damage.

A meeting attended by prominent cultural and social leaders and held at Thiruvananthapuram on December 6 had come to the unanimous conclusion that forced hartals had become a social threat to normal life in the State and had to be resisted.

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