Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday said that the people of Madurai must question Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his upcoming visit to the city on the failures of the Union government.
Addressing a party meeting here on Wednesday to hand over assistance to a recently departed party functionary, he said that people must ask why Mr. Modi was visiting places like Madurai as the Parliamentary election approaches when he was busy visiting foreign countries in the past four years.
He said that, with elections around the corner, the Union government was planning to give ‘lollipops’ to the people like the ill-thought 10 % reservation for economically weaker section of people in general category. “But will people see through it and oust the government,” he said.
Alleging that there was an attempt to create a wedge between opposition parties on the issue of 10 % reservation to economically weaker sections, K. Balakrishnan, State secretary, CPI (M), said that though the party had long argued for considering economic status as a criteria for reservation to Other Backward Classes, but completely disproved the way the Union government implemented it now.
“We in fact want reservation to be extended to the private sector as well since that is where 85 % of the jobs are,” he added.
Stating that such differences between parties on policies were bound to exist, he said that the opposition parties were, however, united in the larger objective of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the 2019 parliamentary election.
Mr. Yechury handed over an assistance of ₹ 5 lakh raised by the party to the family of R. Jothiram, former Madurai urban unit secretary of the party, who passed away last month.
