Patna, March 26: The Bihar capital has turned out to be a proverbial rendezvous of top-ranking Left leaders with the Communist Party of India (CPI) setting in motion its five-day national congress from tomorrow after a gap 26 years.
Party general secretary A.B. Bardhan and other senior leaders, including D. Raja, Gurudas Dasgupta, Amarjit Kaur and Aziz Pasha, have arrived here.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas, CPI-ML (Liberation) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya and senior leaders of several other Left parties are scheduled to arrive here to address the CPI’s convention tomorrow.
CPI cadres will bring out a rally in Patna, which will culminate at a public meeting at Gandhi Maidan tomorrow. Besides Bardhan, Karat, Debabrata Biswas, Gurudas Dasgupta and Dipankar Bhattacharya, others too will address the meet.
Replying to a query on why the party has chosen the NDA-ruled Bihar as the venue of the national congress, the core committee member of the reception body constituted to hold the meeting, Shakeel, said: “The party might not have performed well in the elections but chingari abhi zinda hai (the smouldering is still alive).”
“It is evident from the fact that the CPI for the first time in its existence in Bihar had collected Rs 1.5 crore from its cadres and sympathisers for holding the congress. It is known to all that business houses never contribute to the Left parties. The money has come from the poor workers toiling in agrarian, industrial and unorganised sectors,” said Shakeel.
Observers interpret the CPI’s “get-together” as a move to foster the broader Left unity ahead of the Lok Sabha polls scheduled for 2014. Asked about the Left losing ground in the country, CPI national secretary Atul Kumar Anjan said: “You are wrong. The UPA government at the Centre, presiding over the big scandals, is fast losing the ground. You also saw how the BJP, continuing with its communal agenda, was rejected by the people in the just-concluded elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states.”
“We, as usual, are working among the toiling masses. The party congress in Patna will go a long way in enabling the Left forces to entrench their feet in the Hindi heartland,” Anjan added.
