CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Prakash Karat said on Saturday that the BJP secured an emphatic victory in the elections by putting its “Hindutva project” to effective use.
‘Intimidation’
“The saffron party will pursue its Hindutva ideology and neoliberal economic policies more aggressively in the days to come, and try to eliminate the opposition parties by using money power and intimidating them by implementing its draconian laws against the leaders standing in its way,” Mr. Prakash Karat said.
The CPI(M) leader was speaking after inaugurating the Puchalapalli Sundarayya Skill Development Centre established by the Prajasakti Sahiti Samstha here.
The BJP would engineer defections like it did in Karnataka, Goa, and Telangana. In Andhra Pradesh too it had encouraged four TDP Rajya Sabha members to join the national party, he said.
The ruling party would also restrict the democratic rights, suppress civil liberties, and undermine the constitutional bodies in furtherance of its interests, Mr. Prakash Karat observed.
In this context, he said there was a need for the Left and democratic forces to come up with a counter-ideological agenda to save the country.
‘Advantage capitalists’
“The country is on the cusp of consolidation of political power by the right-wing and, after staging a comeback, the BJP is well-positioned to dictate things with the support of big capitalists in India and international finance capitalists who threw their full weight behind it during the elections,” the CPI(M) leader observed.
The consequences of this political consolidation were going to unfold soon, he said, and added that the Congress and other regional parties fell prey to the machinations of the BJP.
Strangely, the Congress leaders tried to project themselves as “better Hindus” than those in the BJP, but their efforts backfired as the saffron party had “successfully injected communal consciousness among the electorate.”
“In fact, communalism is couched in the garb of nationalism,” Mr. Prakash Karat said.
The attacks on Dalits and minorities were growing, particularly in the northern and western India in the wake of the BJP’s coming back to power. However, the attacks were underplayed by the police and the administration, he alleged.
‘Controversial law’
The Unlawful Activities’ Prevention Act, which was in the making, posed a major threat to the individuals as the suspects could be branded as terrorists without taking the cases to the courts.
Under this controversial law, executive decisions would be enough to put people behind the bars and seize their properties, he said.
The biggest beneficiaries of the privatisation drive were Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, whose wealth grew manifold in 2014-18, Mr. Karat said.
Another thing the BJP was committed to doing was to usurp the rights of the trade unions, for which it sought to abolish 17 laws, and replace them with four pieces of legislation aimed at curbing the rights of the workers, and, thereby, favour the industrialists, he said.
