People's Democracy

ANDHRA PRADESH

Left Parties Decide To Observe Anti-Repression Week

National Leadership To Participate In Land Struggle

M Venugopala Rao

THE CPI(M), CPI and other Left parties decided to observe anti-repression week from August 12, 2007 protesting the repressive measures of the Congress government on the land struggle of the poor for house sites and land in Andhra Pradesh. In a joint statement issued on August 4, B V Raghavulu, Polit Bureau member and state secretary of the CPI(M), K Narayana, state secretary of the CPI, N Murthy of the CPI(ML) Liberation, Venkata Reddy of MCPI(U), Ramanna Goud of the CPI(ML) and Kollipara Venkateswara Rao of ML Committee appealed to all the democratic-minded people to make success the anti-repression week. They criticised the government for not taking steps to solve the land issue and for trying to suppress the movement, though the land struggle was going on for the last three months. The leaders of the Left parties lashed out at the government for carrying on malpropaganda on a large scale to defame the movement and to create a sense of fear among the poor people who were participating in the movement, by using its police machinery. They explained that it was decided to conduct meetings and conventions extensively all over the state.

Earlier, the Left parties decided to intensify the land struggle in Andhra Pradesh and involve their national leadership in it. A meeting of the Left parties was held at Maqdhum Bhavan, the state headquarters of the CPI, in Hyderabad on August 2 to chalk out the future course of the land struggle. The meeting decided to continue the land struggle till the poor people get house sites. The meeting resolved to continue to bring pressure on the state government till it sets up an independent land commission. They had given a call for collection of funds to provide assistance to the families of the martyrs of the police firing at Mudigonda. The Left parties also discussed the reported decision of the state cabinet to hold one more round of talks with the Left parties and decided to participate in talks with the government only if it agrees to their demands. The meeting found fault with the report of the director general of police on the police firing at Mudigonda. Y Venkateswara Rao and B Tulasidas of the CPI(M), K Narayana, K Ramakrishna, T Lakshminarayana and S Venkateswarlu of the CPI, G Diwakar and Govardhan of the CPI(ML) New Democracy, Chandrasekhar of the MCPI(U) and Ramanna Goud and A Venkatrao of the CPI(ML) participated in the meeting.

Briefing the decisions of the meeting to the media, CPI state secretary K Narayana said that as far as holding talks on the land issue is concerned, the ball was in the court of the government. The land struggle would not be confined to the state alone. Saying that the struggle was receiving support from all the states, Narayana said that two teams of leaders were coming from West Bengal and Kerala to the state in this regard. Even in discussing the land issue in the legislative assembly, there was delay, he said. Y Venkateswara Rao, state secretariat member of the CPI(M), said that in connection with the Mudigonda incident, cases of section 307 were registered against 400 people. Pointing out that the report of the DGP on the police firing at Mudigonda was insulting the land struggle, Venkateswara Rao commented that only the DGP could know how people on land died if the police fired in the air. There was no truth in the government dubbing Bandi Ramesh as a pseudo naxalite and that such insinuations were intended to defame the movement of the poor for house sites and land, Venkateswara Rao said. Truth would come out if a judicial enquiry was conducted into the Mudigonda incident, he said. Venkateswara Rao demanded the chief minister, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, to withdraw all the cases registered against the agitators of the land struggle. B V Raghavulu, state secretary of the CPI(M) could not participate in the meeting of the Left parties as he was away in Nellore.