New Delhi, July 20: With the Lok Sabha elections less than a year away, CPI (M) on Saturday decided to step up its campaign against its rival governments in Kerala and West Bengal, the states where the party hopes to win maximum number of seats.
While the party has decided to launch a countrywide campaign against “violence and terror campaign launched by Trinamool Congress” in West Bengal, the party plans to strengthen its agitation in Kerala seeking resignation of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy whose government is under cloud over the solar panel scam.
“The panchayat election in West Bengal is witnessing a brazen and massive attack on democracy,” party General Secretary Prakash Karat told reporters after the meeting of the party politburo here.
Alleging that around 6,000 Left Front candidates were not allowed to file nominations for elections and 19 CPI(M) and Left Front workers have been killed in violence, Mr. Karat said the party would call a countrywide campaign on August 7 to “save democracy and to defeat the violence and terror in West Bengal.”
Noting that the solar panel scam in Kerala is “not an ordinary case of fraud and cheating”, he said the involvement of some of the staff in the Chief Minister’s office with the scamsters has come out. He said the CPI(M)-led LDF has demanded the resignation of the Chief Minister and holding of a judicial inquiry in the light of this exposure.
“The politburo endorsed the demand for the Chief Minister’s resignation and supported the call for an indefinite struggle to achieve this demand,” he said.
