People's Democracy

JHARKHAND

Left Parties Demand Food Security;

Protest against Price Rise

Prakash Viplav

THE four Left parties - CPI(M), CPI, Forward Bloc and RSP organised a joint demonstration in front of Raj Bhawan in Ranchi on July 31, in solidarity with the Five-day central dharna organised by them in New Delhi from July 30 to August 3 against price rise and demanding right to food through a universal public distribution System.

Similar demonstrations were held in other district headquarters as part of the national campaign. In Ranchi, Left Parties’ supporters assembled at Jaipal Singh Stadium and marched towards Raj Bhawan. Police stopped the demonstrators near Raj Bhawan. They sat in dharna and held a meeting. The dharna was  led by CPI(M) state secretary G K Bakshi and CPI(M) leaders, Ramchandra Thakur, Prakash Viplav, Sudhir Das, D D Ramanandan, Prafull Linda, Sufal Mahto; DYFI leaders Sanjay Paswan, Sukhnath Lohra, Subhash Munda, Suresh Munda; CPI leader K D Singh, P K Ganguli, RSP leader Radha Kant Jha and Forward Bloc leader Jayant Pandey.

Leaders of the Left Parties said that the BPL/APL categorisation divides the poor. The government is depriving the people the right to food by using fraudulent methods to define who is poor and who is not poor and how many are poor in each state. It informed the Supreme Court that anyone earning more than 26 rupees a day in rural India and 32 a day in urban India (at 2010-11 prices) cannot be considered poor and therefore cannot get foodgrains at subsidised rates. As a result, large sections of our people are suffering due the high prices in the market. The bogus poverty estimates have resulted in  61 per cent of Scheduled Castes, 55 per cent of Scheduled Tribes, 52 per cent of agricultural workers not having BPL or Antodaya cards, they said.