The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : CPI(ML) plans campaign against SEZs

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

CPI(ML) plans campaign against SEZs

Staff Reporter

PARTY MEET: CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya (with spectacles) at the party's people's convention in Bangalore on Tuesday. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Bangalore: The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) will launch a campaign against the setting up of special economic zones (SEZs) in June, which will culminate in a rally in August.

Party general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya told presspersons here on Tuesday that State Governments and the Centre were using the SEZ Act and the Land Acquisition Act to reverse the process of land reforms and initiate what he termed corporate landlordism in the country. He demanded the abolition of all SEZs, which were gobbling up the fertile land of farmers.

What was required was an alternative industrial and economic policy that would provide employment to the growing number of unemployed people. There was no need to invite foreign investors when there was no dearth of funds within the country. What was happening was that more money was going out of the country than what was received through investors.

Mr. Bhattacharya, who is here to attend the people's convention of the party, said an action plan would be chalked out for the three-month anti-SEZ campaign in consultation with like-minded people.

In Karnataka, the Janata Dal (S)-Bharatiya Janata Party Government was wreaking havoc by indiscriminately acquiring land and destroying livelihoods in the name of development. The BJP and its Sangh Parivar partners were whipping up communal passions and vitiating social harmony. The CPI(ML) would support rural labourers and urban workers while strengthening democratic and progressive forces, he said.

Instead of SEZ projects, the Union Government should extend the rural employment programme and the public distribution system to cover all the districts. Measures should be initiated to extend benefits to unorganised sector workers and end suicide by farmers and to put a stop to violence against Dalits, minorities, Adivasis and women. The Indo-US nuclear deal must be scrapped, he said.

The party would hold an anti-SEZ rally in Kolkota to mark the 40th anniversary of the Naxalbari peasant uprising and support the people who were fighting against the acquisition of land in Nandigram and Singur in West Bengal, he said.

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