People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist)
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Vol.
XXV No. 31
August 05, 2001 |
LEFT MPS FROM
BENGAL TO TAKE UP PENDING ISSUES
In the wake of
the decision taken by the Bengal Left Front, all Left Front members of parliament would
take up every developmental issue of the state pending with the BJP-led union government.
They would also pursue these issues with the concerned departments and provide appropriate
feedbacks to the Bengal Left Front.
Left front
chairman and CPI (M) leader Biman Basu communicated this to INN at the Muzaffar Ahmad
Bhavan.
Biman Basu said
that since " Bengal is not a sovereign republic, the issues that it has pending with
the BJP government are also to be considered as matters of national importance and not
something to be dubbed exclusively as Bengals problems."
"The Left
Front MPs had primary responsibility to the people of Bengal," said Biman Basu,
"since it were they who had elected them" and added to say that "it
devolves on them to pursue matters of Bengal pending with the union government and take
advantage of parliamentary question hour plus sessions of the standing and the
consultative committees."
Asked to
identify and comment on the pending issues that the Left MPs will take up, pursue, and
highlight before the country, Biman Basu said that these were:
- Flood relief of which the union
government has released only a small part (a sum of Rs 103 crore) of the sanctioned Rs
1487 crore. The MPs will demand that the better part of the sanctioned funds is given as
grant-in-aid rather than loan.
- The wagon industry in Bengal is
in virtual recession because of the drastic reduction in the annual order of the union
government from 20,000 wagons to mere 7.5 thousand wagons. The MPs will ask for
restoration of the earlier order.
- The MPs will ask the union
government to continue with the public distribution system just as the Bengal Left Front
government has chosen to persist with it. The union government would also be asked to
provide adequate levels of rationing support to those living below the poverty line.
- A strident demand regarding the
monthly supply of a minimum of 1.16-lakh kilolitres worth of kerosene oil to Bengal would
be made.
- The MPs shall also raise the
issue of the threat of closure hanging over 64 coalmines and ask the union government not
to go in for the winding up of even one coalfield.
- The MPs will focus attention to
the need for modernization of the Bagdogra airport in the Darjeeling district, for that
airport is recognized as the gateway to the entire north-east India and currently cannot
accommodate night take-offs and landings because of lack of adequate runway lights and an
absence of electronic night-landing equipment.
- Similarly, a demand will be made
to start international flights of Aeroflot and the Indian Airlines de novo
to Singapore from the large Netaji Subhas International airport in Kolkata because the
metropolis forms an articulated opening to both east and south-east Asia from the
sub-continent.