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CPI(M) calls for electoral reforms

Special Correspondent

Party/coalition forming government should get over 50% votes

NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Friday sought electoral reforms and changes in the law to ensure that whichever party or coalition forming the government should have more than 50 per cent of the total votes polled in an election.

Participating in the debate on the motion of thanks to President’s address in the Rajya Sabha, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury also underscored the need for constitutional amendment to ensure that Parliament sat for at least 100 days in a year and sought judicial reforms. For this a National Judicial Commission must be set up.

About 283 amendments had been moved, among others by Shivanand Tiwari (Janata Dal-United), D. Raja, Syed Aziz Pasha and R.C. Singh (all CPI), Mr. Yechury, Brinda Karat and Tapan Kumar Sen (all CPI-M), S.S. Ahluwalia and Ramdas Agarwal (both from the BJP).

Supporting the government’s resolve to enact a law against communal violence, Mr. Yechury said the government must ensure that it did not disturb the federal structure. Hailing the election of the first woman Speaker in the Lok Sabha, he said the Women’s Reservation Bill should be brought in at the earliest, for which he expressed his party’s support.

While lauding the proposal for the National Food Security Act, the CPI(M) leader said the government should maintain the present scale of 35 kg discounted foodgrains for each Below Poverty Line family and the Antyodaya Anna Yojana beneficiaries. The BPL criterion needed to be redefined.

Referring to the Left’s opposition to privatisation of pension funds, banking reforms, raising of foreign equity in insurance and full convertibility of rupee during the previous government regime, he said “the devil must be given its due.” However, the proposal now to regulate pension sector was nothing but privatisation of pension funds. “The solution offered was opposite to whatever needed to be done. There must be a serious rethink on this. Otherwise, the policy will bring greater misery on Indian people.”

Mr. Yechury also urged the government to reconsider the public-private partnership mode as people were being made to pay for miscalculations by private businesses. The government needed to address the joblessness and homelessness due to economic slowdown. Disinvestment of public sector undertakings to fund infrastructure projects was not the route that the government should take. Instead, the top corporates, who had paid less than 33 per cent tax on their profits, could contribute.

On foreign affairs, the CPI(M) leader said the President’s address was silent on the Non-Aligned Movement — which represents the third world solidarity — and on the recent cooperation among India, Brazil and South Africa. The cooperation should be extended to include Russia and China.

Mr. Yechury said that the damages wrought by the cyclone ‘Aila’ that hit West Bengal should be declared a national calamity.

Earlier, the Congress slammed the BJP for negative criticism due to its political insecurity. Moving the motion of thanks on the President’s address, Satyavrat Chakravarty (Congress) set the tenor for the United Progressive Alliance’s approach to debating the 283 amendments moved. “[The] Opposition has the right to criticise the government. But the UPA government was being criticised not because its policies were wrong but because some political parties and individuals faced political insecurity.” Keshava Rao (Congress) said the UPA wished to utilise its second term using growth as a tool to reach the end.

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