UPA government ignoring ‘aam aadmi’: Brinda Karat

AGARTALA - Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Brinda Karat said here Saturday that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has forgotten its pre-poll promise and is ignoring the ‘aam aadmi’ (common man).

The government is working with all seriousness for the ‘khaas aadmi’ (special man) instead of the ‘aam aadmi’, said the Left leader.

“The Congress before the last Lok Sabha polls (2009) howled heart-rendering for the poor but after the polls it is working hard for the millionaires,” said Karat, while addressing women in Tripura’s capital Agartala.

“While food inflation rose 16 percent and prices of essentials exceeded all previous records, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is asking Indians to be patient,” the senior Marxist leader said.

She said while lakhs of people fought hunger, foodgrains were eaten by rats in warehouses.

Karat announced that the success story of the CPI-M-led Left Front government in Tripura would be taken to the entire country to enlighten people to compare between the performance of Left and other parties.

In implementation of MGNREG (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee) scheme and other welfare schemes for the marginalised sections, Tripura is the number one state in India, the CPI-M leader said.

Terming New Delhi as the crime capital of India, Karat said that crime against women was the highest in the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states.

“Women are getting poor wages in most of the Congress and the BJP-ruled states,” said

The mass gathering of the women was organised as part of the Tripura state conference of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), a women’s frontal organisation of the CPI-M.

The association’s all-India conference will be held in Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh) Nov 9-12.

Tripura Chief Minister and CPI-M politburo member Manik Sarkar and other women leaders also spoke in the meeting.