People's Democracy

CITU AP State Conference Held

THE 11th state conference of the Andhra Pradesh unit of CITU was held on May 15-18, 2008 in Nalgonda, which was the epicentre of the historic Telangana armed struggle. The conference was preceded by a massive rally of workers and peasants on May 15. Braving the simmering heat, thousands of workers and peasants, including a large number of women thronged Nalgonda. The procession wound through the city with thunderous slogans and bursting of crackers.

Md Amin, general secretary CITU, Mrinal Banerjee, Labour minister in the West Bengal government, Hemalata, secretary, CITU and Ch Seetaramulu, member of the state legislative council addressed the public meeting presided over by R Sudha Bhaskar, president of the AP state committee of CITU.

On May 16, Parsa Satyanarayana, veteran leader of CITU and the trade union movement in the state, unfurled the red flag of CITU. Nomula Narsimhaiah, MLA and president of the reception committee delivered the welcome address. Besides Sudha Bhaskar, Punyavati, Bikshamayya, Ajay Sarma, Roja and Ramanjaneyulu, all vice presidents of the state committee acted as the presidium. Mrinal Banerjee inaugurated the conference, which was named after Chittabrata Majumdar, former general secretary of CITU. Outlining the attacks on the working class due to the policies of globalisation and liberalisation, he emphasised the need to organise the unorganised workers, both in the organised and unorganised sectors and strengthening working class unity.

Veeraiah presented the general secretary's report. He told that two major campaigns of the CITU in the state-the Sramika Samara Bheri, the statewide jatha to highlight the problems of the unorganised and the 'Budgetlo Vaata, Assembly Baata' (march to the state assembly demanding a share in the budget) - helped the CITU in the state in reaching vast sections of the workers. While expressing satisfaction that the membership of CITU has increased and now it has committees in almost all the mandals in the state, the report emphasised the need to strengthen the organisation further. The report also proposed the future strategy to strengthen CITU by organising the workers in statewide sectors, particularly those related to the state government, identifying the clusters where different sections of workers were concentrated and making concerted efforts to organise them. It also called for improving the functioning of the mandal committees, and develop them as agitation propaganda centres of the CITU at the local level.

The conference discussed the report in two parts, with a session devoted entirely for the discussion on the future strategy. Representatives of all the district committees and the 30 sectors present in the conference participated in the discussions after which the report was adopted unanimously. The conference adopted several resolutions including against price rise, supporting the all India general strike on August 20, and on the problems of different sectors of the working class and the toiling people.

662 delegates attended the conference out of which 159 were women. 308 delegates, nearly half, were below 40 years of age. 380 delegates are educated beyond intermediate. 242 came from working class, 106 from middle class, 96 from agricultural labour, 5 from peasant background. More than half of the delegates, 357 were from socially oppressed sections of the society like the SC, ST, OBC and Minorities. 65 per cent of the delegates participated in the land struggle and 167 went to jails.

The conference unanimously elected the new leadership consisting of 26 office bearers with S Veeraiah as the president and R Sudha Bhaskar as the general secretary and a 219 member state council. The state council unanimously elected an 87 member state committee. The percentage of women in the leadership has also increased. Four women have been elected as office bearers. The state council and the working committee had 62 and 33 women respectively. Cultural functions and an exhibition of the struggles were also held before the conference.