NDA govt has nothing to celebrate, says Sitaram Yechury

Thrissur: CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury has said that the BJP-led government at the centre had nothing to celebrate during the third year of its rule. “The job creation in the industrial sector is at an eight-year low. The NDA government which came to power promising two crore jobs for the youth every year has been able to generate only 3.6 lakh jobs in total as per the figures of the government’s labour bureau,” he said. Mr Yechury, who inaugurated the annual programme ‘EMS Smrithi’ here on Tuesday, said that major companies like Larsen & Toubro had retrenched the staff whereas in IT, Infosys and Cognizant had announced retrenchment of 56,000 workers.

The Opposition parties would hold a meeting in Delhi on Wednesday to discuss fielding a consensus presidential candidate, he said. Though a rainbow coalition in Bihar had defeated the BJP in the Assembly elections, he said that his party congress had taken a decision against a political coalition with the Congress. “Till the next party Congress, we will stick to the decision,” he said.

Comparing the UPA and NDA governments, he said that corruption was dangerous but corruption with communalism was more dangerous. He also said that he would not contest to the Rajya Sabha for the third time. In view of the widespread protests by farmers across the country, the CPM will demand the promulgation of a new law to fix the minimum support price (MSP) for agriculture products, which is one-and-a-half times more than the inputs costs fixed by Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CAPC), he said.