People's Democracy

CPI(M) Slams Arun Jaitley For Making False Charges

Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has issued the following statement on 06 October 2006

IT is deplorable that the BJP leader, Arun Jaitley, makes charges that are not only untrue but also presents concocted facts.

The CPI(M) has raised the issue as to why the Vizhinjam Port project awarded to a consortium of Indian and Chinese companies has been cancelled. The consortium had won the bid in a global tender. It is an important project for Kerala and the contract was awarded before the LDF government came to office.

For the information of Arun Jaitley, all the political parties in Kerala – the CPI(M), the LDF, the Congress, UDF and even the BJP – have opposed the cancellation of the contract on grounds of security. The chief minister of Kerala led an all-party delegation to the prime minister requesting that the contract be given the go ahead.

Jaitley should find out from the Kerala BJP unit the actual facts before hurling the charge that the CPI(M) is doing “a PR job for a Chinese company”.

It is also unfortunate that Jaitley makes the baseless allegation that Chinese labour was to be brought in for the project. This is another fiction created by Jaitley.

Probably, Mr Jaitley, given the BJP’s ideological predilections for the United States and Israel, sees foreign investment from other countries through saffron-tinted glasses. But that is no reason why Chinese companies should be kept out of infrastructure projects such as the Vizhinjam Port.