Bengal LF Welcomes High Court Stay Order

B Prasant

MEETING at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan in Kolkata in the early afternoon of October 14, the Bengal Left Front has welcomed the stay order which the Kolkata High Court’s division bench imposed on the earlier order by a single judge banning rallies and processions during the daylight hours and on weekdays.

The Left Front emphasised that the struggle for the rights of the people would continue apace and processions, rallies, and meetings would continue to be held as before.  Indeed, even as the single bench clamped down the ban, the Left Front constituents as well as the Left mass organisations had taken to the streets to remonstrate against the order.

Left Front chairman Biman Basu and state secretary of the CPI(M) Anil Biswas stated that processions, marches and padayatras were brought out on the basis of specific demands of the people and were organised to give wide ventilation of the issues involved while seeking to mobilise popular protests. 

Biman Basu said that people would also be made aware of the dangerous communal politics of the Sangh Parivar and the latest machinations of the forces of imperialism led by the US. As before, such programmes would be held, the leaders said, without causing a great deal of inconvenience to the people.

50,000 STUDENTS -YOUTH MARCH IN KOLKATA

In the afternoon of October 13, a massive procession was organised by the Left students’-youth organisations in central Kolkata.  More than 50,000 young men and women marched along the streets of Kolkata shouting slogans against the HC order banning rallies and processions in the daylight hours and on weekdays.  This was one of the biggest marches of the students and the youth that the metropolis has ever seen. 

The marchers traversed along College Street and Lenin Sarani to arrive at the Rani Rashmoni Road where a rally was held.  When the marchers were entering the rally venue, the extreme end of the procession was still coming out of the College Street campus of the Kolkata University.

Among those who addressed the big rally were: general secretary of the DYFI, Tapas Sinha, state secretary of the SFI, Apurba Chatterjee, state president of the SFI, Sudip Sengupta (who presided over the occasion), and other student-youth leadership.

The leaders declared that as long as hunger, poverty, and joblessness remained, popular protests would continue apace but certainly without causing any distress or inconvenience. 

From the rally, a delegation of left students-youth met the chief minister and handed over a memorandum to him.  The delegation included leaders of the SFI, DYFI, AIYL, AISB, RYF, PSU, RYB, AISF, and AIYF.

TU’S PROTEST ATTACK ON RIGHTS

A big central rally of Left trade unions in Kolkata, held at the Shahid Minar maidan on the evening of October 14, strongly criticised all attempts at sabotaging the hard-earned democratic rights of the people. More than 20,000 workers-employees attended the protest rally.

The TU leaders said that in the backdrop of a series of attacks being orchestrated by the BJP-led central government, there was no scope for the discontinuation of struggles and movements.  They said that the central government was active in seeking to rob the working people of their rights and that democratic movements would continue apace to safeguard those rights.

The leaders said that the judicial system was being run to look to the interests of the Indian ruling classes, and they pointed out that ‘judicial activism’ seemed to stop at banning rallies and strikes and would not take within its purview the closure of factories and the rampant retrenchment of workers. 

The speakers at the Kolkata rally included: Kali Ghosh (CITU), Ashok Ghosh (UTUC), Ranjit Guha (AITUC), Sudhangsu Ghosh (TUCC), Sankar Saha (UTUC-LS), Laltaprasad Asthana (HMS), Basudeb Basu (AICCTU), Sujit Roy (Rail workers’ federation)), and Salil Chakraborty (BEFI) and Chunilal Dasgupta (12th July Committee) who presided over the rally.  A Left TU rally was also held on the same day at Siliguri in north Bengal, condemning all attacks on the democratic rights of the people.

WOMEN RALLY AGAINST ATTACK

At a big rally held at Rani Rashmoni Road in Kolkata on October 16, four Left women’s organisations, AIDWA, WBWA, ABWS, and FWA demonstrated against the recent encroachments on rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

The speakers, who included Kanak Mukherjee and Rekha Goswami of the AIDWA, said that the series of judgements and rulings of the Supreme Court, the Kerala High Court, and the Haryana High Court represented a worrying development. For all of these were attempts at extending control of the administration in a manner not envisaged in the Indian Constitution.

The judicial activism, the leaders pointed out, was clearly aimed at curtailing the people’s rights and to make the inroads of imperialism and neo-liberalism unproblematic for the ruling classes. 

The leaders assured that the movements against the anti-people policies of the BJP, against Imperialism, and for equal wages for women would continue apace through rallies and processions and it would be seen, as before, that the people were never to put to inconvenience because of the movements and struggles. 

Kanak Mukherjee presided over the rally.  A presidium of Banani Biswas, Bani Dasgupta, Sampa Sengupta, and Biva Majumdar conducted the proceedings.

Elsewhere at Raina in the district of Burdwan AIDWA general secretary, Brinda Karat flayed the policies of the BJP-led central government while addressing the open session of the 17th conference of the Burdwan district unit of the AIDWA.

Brinda Karat said that an RSS-led BJP was engaged in spreading the poison of communalism across the country and attempts were constantly made to divide the toiling masses along lines of religion and region. She pointed out that women were greatly affected, and in the most adverse manner by the liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation of the Indian economy.  Death due to hunger and diseases has sharply increased.  Food crops were allowed to rot in storage while hunger stalked the masses of the people. 

Brinda Karat pointed out that without the development of women, there could be no real development of the country and in that in this endeavour, the central government appeared unwilling to exert itself in any manner.